Today we’d like to introduce you to Ron Fitzsimmons.
Hi Ron, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I know from personal experience that when you grow up in poverty, you face many different hardships. When your house has no heat or there is no food in the refrigerator, you suffer physically. I also know that when you venture into the public, you can experience emotional hardships that are just as painful.
You might feel ashamed when you go to school wearing the same tattered sweater five days in a row. You want to hide when you have to tell your teacher you cannot afford the field trip fee. Or you might decide to skip school altogether because you cannot afford deodorant and you want to avoid being the subject of snickering as you walk down the halls. Indeed, the public aspect of poverty can be harsher than the private.
In the early 1960s, my family received a monthly welfare payment that barely covered the cost of rent and food. Our mother – Alice – insisted that we stay in the same middle-class community so after a while, we were targeted as “those welfare kids.” Needless to say, our self-esteem suffered greatly. Alice understood our pain and she did whatever she could to pick up extra cash to supplement the welfare check. And when she got that money, she’d proudly run home to announce to us that we were going shopping! To this day, we recall the exhilarating feeling of getting onto the school bus wearing new clothes or sporting a new haircut. Maybe it meant getting a new baseball glove or the required gym uniform. In the grand scheme of things, these items were not as important as food and shelter but they lifted our spirits and made us feel more “normal” among our classmates.
Almost nine years ago, I was reminiscing about how my mother tried hard to make us feel good about ourselves despite our desperate situation and an idea started to form about how we could do for other children what Alice did for us. How could we help lift these kids like Alice lifted us?
The rest is history. With assistance from my sister, Laura Peters, we consulted with numerous charities to see if they had a mechanism to offer targeted financial assistance to a child and the unanimous answer was “no.” One director replied, “we do not have a petty cash drawer.” With the assurance that we would not be duplicating any other charitable efforts, we formed Alice’s Kids.
And after all these years, we know that a little help can go a long way.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The process of setting up a non-profit can be complicated and can take time but within seven months of our filing our paperwork, we were off and running. From the outset, I was able to raise money from numerous friends so I simply started visiting local schools to tell them about our service. The responses were generally very skeptical as if they did not believe how easy our process was. But we persisted and the requests for help slowly started coming in. This year, we are on target for spending approximately $700,000 on children across the country and our Board of Directors recently adopted a very aggressive budget for 2023 calling for us to spent $1 MILLION next year!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My whole life has been dedicated in some way to public service. I’ve worked for the Internal Revenue Service (no jokes please), for several members of Congress, as a lobbyist for the pro-choice movement and even a short stint as a substitute teacher! My inspiration to serve others came from Bobby Kennedy and I’ve always been anxious to give back to others, to make people’s lives better, to fight the good fight. But the work I am doing now with Alice’s Kids is the best work I’ve ever done. Imagine the thrill of being able to send a kid to camp, to get them new glasses, to let them go to their local clothing store to buy new back-to-school clothes. It’s like I’m playing Santa Claus every day.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was always a likeable kid, a rather good baseball player, a very good musician. Not a great student, however in the middle years. One reason was that once we were forced onto the welfare system, our life changed dramatically. We were dubbed “those welfare kids” and I missed a lot of schools because I was just too ashamed to go and be made fun of. And when you miss school, your grades suffer.
Ours was a difficult childhood but we were fortunate to escape that cycle of poverty that grabs so many other kids. And, of course, running Alice’s Kids feels like I’ve completed that circle and I just love helping lift kids who are in the same position that I was as a child.
Besides running Alice’s Kids, I am addicted to The Beatles and the New York Yankees. I am a voracious reader who over the years has collected hundreds of autographs on my favorite books. I also enjoy being part of the Harmony Heritage Singers, a group of mostly retired men who sing barbershop songs across Fairfax County.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.aliceskids.org
- Facebook: facebook.com/aliceskids.org
- Twitter: twitter.com/alicewillhelp
