10-year-old's blessing bags for homeless capture Barack Obama's attention

Jahkil Jackson is going to have a hard time topping 2017, but something tells me he'll find a way.
The 10-year-old Chicagoan set out last year to create 5,000 blessing bags and distribute them to people who are homeless. The bags include soap, toothpaste, shampoo and other toiletries, socks and a healthy snack.

On Dec. 28, he packed his 5,000th bag. On Dec. 29, Barack Obama tweeted about him.

The former president was on an end-of-the-year hope-spreading mission, tweeting out a collection of stories from 2017 that "remind us what's best about America." Jahkil and his blessing bags made the list.

"I was asleep in my room because I was tired and I didn't have anywhere to go, and my mom woke me up and yelled at me, 'Barack Obama just tweeted about you!' " Jahkil told me recently. "She just went on Facebook or something and saw that he tweeted about me."

"I don't have Twitter," Jahkil's mom, Natae Jackson, said. "Someone sent me a screenshot saying, 'President Obama just tweeted about Jahkil from his personal account.' I was like, 'What?'"

So was I.

Those of you who read my columns with any sort of regularity know I'm fiercely loyal to Chicago and want the whole of our story told. Not just the violence, which is real and gut-wrenching. Not just the cash-strapped public schools, which are, indeed, cash-strapped. Not just the lives lost, which are far, far too many.

Those parts of our story deserve - indeed, need - our attention. But we can't understand those parts, we can't fully care about those parts, when we don't know what's at stake. When we don't learn the rest of the story. The teachers and artists and entrepreneurs and activists and authors and police officers and architects and children - oh, man, the children - who work and learn and grow here. Who make sense of it. Who make it beautiful.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/homelessness/10-year-olds-blessing-bags-for-homeless-capture-barack-obamas-attention/ar-BBHSAum?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout