This winter, Guilford High School (GHS) student Alissa Chen felt compelled to help those whose pandemic struggles went beyond disruptions to routine or social isolation—people who had lost access to basic necessities. Her personal efforts blossomed into a larger movement to rally her community to make a connection.

Partnering with local businesses, Chen spent weeks of her own pandemic lockdown gathering donations of food, winter coats, hygiene products, and other essentials, which she helped deliver to a soup kitchen in New Haven called DESK.

But that experience revealed something else—something that was lacking in even these efforts to help people who are often passed over by the rest of society.

“When I introduced my DESK drive to a bunch of people, I could sense that people were in that patronizing mindset,” Chen said. “I feel like people just generally have the sense that helping the homeless just means giving the stuff that we don’t want to people. We don’t put it into our heads that homeless people are just normal people.”

Humanizing, personalizing, understanding, and truly reaching out as peers instead of as saviors is something that Chen hopes to create with a new initiative, an organization she is calling Sunshine Satchels and launching next month. The premise is simple: She’s asking anyone interested to start by writing a simple, personal letter that can be delivered to one of their struggling neighbors.

“A lot of donation drives are centered on just the basic necessities. But I think everybody needs that little something extra in their life,” Chen said. “Right now, that’s the letters.”

Currently putting together a sort of gift bag, which initially will still mostly contain those same essential items, Chen said she hopes soon to begin including things that go beyond basic needs intended purely as treats or personal gifts, just to be enjoyed.

Working with another New Haven faith-based charity called Chapel on the Green, Chen wants the letters to create that initial feeling of having someone actually care about you, and make the experience of receiving them a humanizing one as she gets her initiative off the ground.

“I just started so I don’t have that much funding...in the future I hope to add like gift cards, little goodies,” she said.

Rather than grocery store gift cards, Sunshine Satchels plans to include gift cards to clothing stores, for ice cream, or really anything that is meant for enjoyment and to brighten someone’s day rather than simply allow them to continue living, according to Chen.

Writing letters is a way for the Guilford community to start relating to people who live very different lives than them as equals, Chen said, as peers whose lives are not just centered around their tragedy or struggles. Chen said she doesn’t have any requirements for how the letters should be structured, but said she hopes people can just share feelings, thoughts, ideas, and other things they likely have in common with the recipient.

“Maybe just like small talk, and regular conversation,” she said. “Maybe, ‘The weather has been nice,’ or, ‘I’ve really enjoyed doing this, what about you?’ Instead of just having their entire lives centered around homelessness...it definitely doesn’t feel good, being reminded of that constantly.”

Chen said she plans to come up with some kind of a template that people can use if they aren’t confident or comfortable writing, but urged anyone to focus on that personal, non-patronizing attitude, putting in that extra effort to hand-write the letter, for instance.

“But any kind of letter is nice to receive,” she added.

Though Sunshine Satchels is currently entirely run by Chen, there are bigger things ahead for the project, she said, with the potential to incorporate as a non-profit as she begins liaisoning with more established clubs and charities at GHS.

But big or small, the kind of attitude and feeling that Sunshine Satchels hopes to form is something that will always be important, according to Chen.

“Everybody needs that little something extra in their life...that extra ray of sunshine,” she said.

Letters or any questions about the initiative can be sent to sunshinesatchels@gmail.com.