DONN BROWN / Staff

Ashley Winter, 10, and her grandmother Rita Bruno hold a blanket purchased with money collected through her blanket campaign.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

Tell us about it

• What would you add to this story? Tell us what we missed.
• Do you have photos from this event? Documents we need to see? Share with us.
• Upload photos & videos
• More ways to get your stuff online and in the paper.

More Local News

• Workplace winners, part 1
• The difference an education can make
• Junk money and subtrusts

Share and Enjoy [?]

The sultry summer has most youngsters thinking about the pool, but 10-year-old Ashley Winters can’t stop thinking about blankets.

“The idea just came to me after Grandma talked about people who don’t have money to buy things,” Winters says of her campaign to provide blankets for the homeless. “She told me about one lady who was going to give shoes and socks to her kids for Christmas.”

Winters was riding in the car shortly before Christmas 2007, when she noticed some of the ramshackle houses lining the roads through Central Florida.

“Some people must think I live in a mansion,” she remembers thinking.

That’s when she decided to take matters into her own hands.

Winters, a rising fifth-grader at Sabal Palm Elementary, told her grandmother Rita Bruno, that she wanted to buy blankets for poor and homeless people, in lieu of the gifts she might normally get.

“She shocked me with the idea,” says Bruno, a Marco Island resident. “She has so much compassion. My thought was to encourage her at this age and not brush it off. That might discourage her future efforts.”

Despite the late hour, the pair headed out to buy an array of full-size and baby blankets, and before the night was over, donated several to the Salvation Army, where Winters had attended pre-school. The teacher who accepted the blankets was thrilled with the gifts and told Winters she knew exactly which families would appreciate them most.

“Ashley was very happy when we had our first cold spell,” Bruno recalls. “She knew that because of her, there were some people that were a little warmer with their new blankets. As her grandmother, I am very proud of her.”

Winters, who says she’d one day like to work at a soup kitchen, plans to do it all again this year, only bigger and better, calling her project, “Winters’ Warmers.”

“I’d like to get 40 blankets for the Salvation Army and St. Matthews House,” she says of her goal. “But it’d be good to get more than that. That’s why I’m starting early, so maybe I can collect more.”

Bruno has called on friends and family to help the pair with the project, and hopes the public will join in, too. Last year, blankets averaged between $6 and $10. At those costs, Winters will need around $400 to meet her goal.

“I really do hope that this is a success for her and helps to foster compassion for the less fortunate,” said Bruno.

To make a donation to Winters’ Warmers, send new blankets or cash donations to: Ashley Winters, 3783 10th Ave. S.E., Naples FL, 34117.