Nine-year-old Olivia Sexton just wants to help people. Last Christmas Eve she learned how to crochet with her grandmother, Baptist Memorial Health Care senior paralegal Willette Campbell. She has been making scarves to sell and give as gifts ever since.
“I make the scarves mostly because it’s fun, and you can give it to people who need scarves or something warm,” Olivia said. “I really want to give it to people in the homeless shelters. At my school we did this food drive, and I want to be able to give them warm things, too.”
At $10 a pop, her scarves have become very popular at her grandmother’s office at the Baptist Corporate building. “It went viral,” Willette said. “She came up here and everybody in the office wanted one. I sold seven today. It’s just really fun, we do a lot of crafting together and she helps me a lot.”
Since she began crocheting scarves, Olivia has made $2,000, and she is responsible with her profits. “The money that I make I put in my bank account,” she said. “This summer I used some of it to go to church camp.”
Olivia is not in it for the money, though. “I just want to help people,” she said. Willette said Olivia likes giving scarves away to people who need them just as much as she likes selling them.
Olivia and Willette are among the many people who have been helped by the Kemmons Wilson Family Center for Good Grief. The center helped them overcome the loss of three loved ones in three years. Both continue to give back to the center, and Olivia hopes to become a counselor at Camp Good Grief, Baptist Trinity’s bereavement camp for children.
Anyone interested in buying a scarf can contact Willette at emwhylet@yahoo.com.