Butterfly Effect Project Delivers Food & Hope

The girls of the Butterfly Effect Project braved the heat last Saturday to bring lunches all around the neighborhoods surrounding Ludlum Park in Riverside, as part of their second annual “Feed the Streets” initiative.

The Butterfly Effect Project, founded by Riverside resident Tijuana Fulford, helps empower young girls to be leaders in their community, and Ms. Fulford has found that many of the girls she works with worry that their neighbors will have enough to eat.

So, beginning last July, the girls have embarked on a mission to go door to door through the neighborhoods surrounding the Phillips Avenue School, bringing with them sandwiches, fresh fruit and juice and water for their neighbors in need on one Saturday each summer.

This past Saturday, July 8,  37 girls and 11 parents and helpers met at Ludlum Avenue Park and made lunches to bring around to people they know in their neighborhood who they thought could use a friendly visit and a good meal.

They had help from the Southampton Youth Bureau, which provided a $500 grant to help buy sandwich makings.

With wagons donated by community members, they braved the heat and headed out on their mission to Feed the Streets, walking a total of 10,638 steps before meeting their goal of distributing all the sandwiches, singing the Butterfly Effect Project’s chant as they walked on: “Everywhere we go, people wanna know, who we are, so we tell them: we are the butterflies, mighty mighty butterflies!”

“A lot of times, when people make donations, they help people in other places, but we’re feeding our community,” said Ms. Fulford after a successful day of delivering lunches.

The group had the help of the Southampton Town Police, with one officer who regularly checked up on their progress, and even let Ms. Fulford know she’d left her car unlocked at the Ludlum Avenue Park.

“It was good for the girls to see the police interact with the group like that,” said Ms. Fulford.

In all, the girls made and delivered 221 sandwiches throughout the neighborhood.