Meet the East Dallas teen that founded Ursuline Academy’s largest club
Photography by Rae Overman
Ursuline Academy of Dallas Senior Mary Peterson has just returned from visiting her friends at Tulane University.
She’s sporting a T-shirt with the university’s name across the front as she fishes for items in her trunk. In the back portion of the car is a large pile of well over 40 white paper bags with looped handles, filled with pencils, candies and other supplies — each of them has Halloween-themed drawings and decorations across the front. She grabs as many of the handles as possible in her fists as she walks up the steps to After8toEducate, an organization that services unsheltered high school students.
These kinds of drop-offs are now part of Peterson’s routine of providing useful items for those in need.
The nonprofit Kits for Hope has been operating since Peterson’s sophomore year. The kits are often themed, including tailored basic necessities and inspiring messages.
“Our main purpose is to provide kits for homeless women and their children across Dallas and then those donations often go to Genesis or After8toEducate,” Peterson says. “We evenly split it up between more need-based kits, which is like the tampons, underwear, shampoo — things like that. And then the more fun base, just to bring some positivity within it as well.”
Photography by Rae Overman
After three school years, Kits for Hope has became the largest club in Ursuline’s history, with roughly 420 members, including several officers and a faculty advisor.
The army of young women have created and donated over 1,000 kits since the club started. Peterson says an average of 50 to 60 girls come in per month to help with the creation of kits.
“I think I’m just blessed to be able to be surrounded by so many girls who are willing to dedicate their time at school and outside of school to help change the narrative of homelessness in Dallas,” she says.
Volunteering has been part of Peterson’s life since she was 13, often going with her mother.
“I started to volunteer at Dallas Hope Charities, which [was affiliated with] church in Uptown Dallas, and it was feeding the homeless,” Peterson says. “It wasn’t just like you’d give them the food and then they’d sit down. It was more like a restaurant style, so you’d get into conversation with them and talk.”
She would sit across from people who were facing some of their darkest times. One man stands out in her memory — Tom. He sported a yellow band around his wrist, a hospital bracelet still left on after being freshly discharged.
Fast forward to her freshman year of high school, when Ursiline released a statement about students creating clubs and organizations on and for the campus. Her conversations with Tom came to mind.
“It made me so emotional to think that there were so many people in Dallas homeless, without homes, and so many people just neglect them every day,” she says. “And I noticed that we really didn’t have anything tailored to the homeless population in Dallas.”
She sent in the request to create the club. She had no name for it at the time. She pondered over the possibilities in her free time, even at lunch with her friends. They tossed ideas across the table until one landed: “Kits for Hope.”
Peterson plans to take Kits for Hope to college, making the organization a part of undergraduate experience in some form or another, her attempt at “building a bridge between Dallas,” and wherever she goes.
“I know there’s gonna be so many times in college where my identity is changing. Something that will always be constant with me is Kits for Hope,” Peterson says. “I think it’s just a really good way to keep me grounded, within the world and within my faith.”
