Seven-year-old prefers charity to birthday presents

Sweet story from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel (the gifts went to World Harvest Missions’ Children’s Home in Haiti through Cross International).

Feb. 28, 2009 – by C. Ron Allen / South Florida Sun-Sentinel

(Boca Raton., FL) – Kyle Conger turns 7 today, but he doesn’t want any presents.

The Boca Raton boy, touched by images and stories he saw online of an orphanage in Haiti, has asked his friends to donate money instead of bringing gifts to his birthday party this afternoon.

“I want to help them because that’s what God told me to do,” said Kyle, a first-grader at Spanish River Christian School.

Kyle’s mother, Debbie Conger, said some parents encourage their kids to forgo gifts at birthdays and ask for charitable donations instead. Party guests are not required to make donations, she said.

“He’s got a really good heart,” Conger said.

She and Kyle searched the Internet for charities.

“I was kind of gearing toward a school or something like that because it’s hard to explain an orphanage to a first-grader,” Conger said. “He said, ‘Go back. … What’s an orphan? … That’s what I want to help.’ So who was I to argue?”