Jenks 15-Year-Old Donates Pumpkin Carving Kits To Help Families Make Fall Memories

A 15-year-old girl in Jenks came up with an idea to donate Pumpkin Carving Kits to kids whose families might not be able to purchase the supplies this year.

The Food Bank said this is the first time someone has made a donation like this and they hope to keep it going for years to come.

What are your childhood Halloween memories? Are they full of a sugar rush or two? Maybe a ghost story?

"This is our carving kit package, this is all the things you would need to carve the pumpkins and roast the pumpkin seeds," said 15-year-old Delaney Ferguson.

The Jenks Food Bank is getting packed full of pumpkins and carving kits, because this is how Ferguson remembers Halloween.

"We would all come around the table and fight over who was going to have the best pumpkin, and who was going to have the biggest one and then my dad would cook up the pumpkin seeds afterward," said Ferguson.

Ferguson wanted other kids to have the same happy memories she did. She came up with the idea to donate pumpkin carving kits to the Jenks Food Bank and worked with her friends at the National Charity League to make it happen.

"There is going to be a lot of parents and single moms out there that as they walk past the pumpkins at the grocery store, "Mom! Can I have one!?' 'No hun. We can't," said Dana Williams with the Jenks Food Bank.

This was not an easy process. These girls worked hard, and they weren't always sure they were going to be able to pull it off.

"We knew that if we could get this done, it could bring a lot of kids a lot of joy," said 16-year-old Faith Koontz with the NCL.

They applied for a grant and got it but ended up raising so much money from community members, they voted to give the grant money back. Ferguson said the raised enough money to buy the pumpkin carving kits and Reasor’s in Jenks covered everything they were missing.

"The way the Jenks Community Food Bank is going to be able to give back to the community is because the community gave to us to help them," Teresa Ferguson, Delaney’s mom said.  

The girls were able to turn their idea into a living, breathing, project that is helping them care for many other families on other holidays and will become a tradition at the Food Bank.

"We need the same things on our shelf here as there is in any other grocery store,” Williams said. “We got that today. We are going to have a happy, happy Halloween in Jenks.”