A Precious Child

A little girl—no more than 7 or 8 years old—rushes into the room at A Precious Child, making a beeline straight for her father. Proudly, she holds up a pair of bright blue pants and declares that these are what she will wear to school the next day. Her father doesn’t say much, but the expression on his face speaks volumes.
This is the scene that greets me as I wait to speak with Britta Robinson, the Associate Director of A Precious Child, an organization launched five years ago to help “children have the basic essentials.” Tucked inside a Broomfield business park, the modest exterior of the local nonprofit belies the overwhelming amount of good being done inside.
A Precious Child provides programs like Precious Essentials, which gives clothing and necessities to people of all ages who are referred to the charity by one of its 200 community partners. Equipped with a personal shopper, clients are “able to go through the resource center and find what they need,” Robinson says.

Since their founding, A Precious Child has established six different programs to help families. The bulk of these are exclusively child oriented efforts which benefit little lives in big ways, like the young girl whose day was made by a pair of new pants.

Other lives have been touched by the Fill a Backpack program, which focuses on the importance of academic success early on by making sure that children have what they need to do well in school. With the help of their partners and individual contributors, A Precious Child distributes backpacks full of supplies to children in need at the beginning of each school year.
It is this everyday kind of joy—the ability to blow out candles on your birthday or have new clothes to wear to school—that A Precious Child is, at its essence, all about.
Robinson and I pause in front the warehouse brimming with Barbies and Legos and she explains another program that’s important this time of year—the Precious Gift. The organization gives children gifts during the holidays and also provides “birthday bags” all year long. Stocked with party essentials—cake mix, candles, and frosting—these bags guarantee that children get to celebrate their big day properly.
It is this everyday kind of joy—the ability to blow out candles on your birthday or have new clothes to wear to school—that A Precious Child is, at its essence, all about. Twenty-four thousand people benefitted from this nonprofit last year, but as Robinson and the volunteers make evident, success for them is not simply measured by the quantity of lives touched, but also by the improved quality of those same lives.