Special to the North Star
Naperville North juniors and co-founders of Kits4Kids, Raya Ajmere and Abby May, have helped to keep their organization continuously expanding.
Kits4Kids hosted an event at Naper Elementary on February 6th, 2025, where they gave a presentation to students about the importance of giving back to their community. After the presentation, kids wrote encouraging cards which were then included in future kits. According to May, the entire event represented a full circle moment of kids connecting to each other.
“It was really cool to see how excited they were about giving back and helping the community… [it] really tied into our mission about giving kids the opportunity to give back to other kids in their community,” May said.
This nonprofit organization started out as a one-time idea to make specialized toy kits for children in hospitals to battle loneliness, but after realizing their impact, they continued their journey. Kits4Kids has brought many kids in difficult situations joy, with one parent of a kit recipient even writing a letter expressing their gratitude for the organization.
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia explained that one in ten children hospitalized experiences mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. While a kit is not the whole solution to helping these children, it’s an important way to connect these kids to their peers and can have a positive effect on their mental health.
Kits4Kids carefully crafts kits full of toys and other things a child might want based on their age and gender, ensuring a more personal and individual experience for each child. The juniors raised the money for their first kits in 2024 by asking family and friends to donate via venmo where they ended up raising around 1,000 dollars in three days according to the cofounders.
After their first experience, they realized how much bigger this organization could become with a nonprofit status. They poured hours into raising money, awareness, and filing the necessary paperwork to become a nonprofit. According to the cofounders, today they have raised over 38,000 dollars and given out over 1,250+ kits. Adjmere explained why it was necessary to become a nonprofit for Kit4Kids to continue to grow.
“Before becoming a nonprofit… corporate donations did not take [us] seriously. They said… you’re not a nonprofit. You don’t have the forms,” Adjmere said.
A month ago, Kits4Kids hit another breakthrough. The weekend of February 7th, they crossed state borders for the first time into Madison, Wisconsin. They worked with Ronald McDonald House, a place where parents of children with chronic illnesses can stay while their child is in the hospital, to bring kids in Madison their very own kit. Adjmere explained that this was a big benchmark for Kits4Kids as it showed the true impact Kits4Kids can have.
“[It was] a really big deal for us because it seemed so far out of reach even just a year ago. It’s a really good experience to reach more kids [and] to be able to go to Wisconsin and reach a broader audience,” Adjmere said.
