COLORADO SPRINGS — On Sunday, a Colorado Springs organization is helping spread the love by setting up donations in Antlers Park for people in need. “Because We Choose to” has been giving back for seven years.

“We just started collecting just random donations throughout the community and kind of just set up for a free for all for of the community members that normally get overlooked within the community… the homeless, the people who are struggling that don’t necessarily qualify for assistance,” said owner and founder, Kayla Farris.

The goal of the nonprofit is to help the less fortunate through monthly events. Sunday’s event, Spread the Love Hand up, gave necessary items to those who needed a little extra assistance.

Tristan and other donors bring their bags of donations to Antlers Park. Credit: Ray Harless

“We started with just a bunch of blankets and coats we had in the back of our closets and we were talking about taking them down to Goodwill and donating them but we were in the middle of a snowstorm so we decided hey, let’s go downtown and see if anybody down there actually needs it,” Farris said.

It took hold and snowballed into larger events, inspiring others to get on board as well. One of those givers in Tristan. Instead of presents for his 10th birthday this year, he asked for something much better.

“If I didn’t do donations, and I just did normal presents, what would happen most likely would be is, I would use them for like a week maybe and then get bored of them,” Tristan said.

Upon hearing this, his parents immediately reached out to “Because We Choose to”.

People who came to the park to receive the donations could find anything from shoes and clothes to blankets and toiletries. Credit: Ray Harless

“Saying I did donations, that’ll help to… they’ll get more use out of them and will really help,” Tristan said.

“Those are stories that we love to hear about. We do get a lot of those — the ‘little heroes’ are what we call them,” Farris said.

Inspired by a classmate, Tristan said he hopes others can help spread the love too.

“Because We Choose to” has monthly events all year long for the less fortunate. You can find out more about the organization and how to get involved or to keep in the loop on their monthly events on their Facebook page.