Z'yon's Story

Z’yon’s Story……

 

Z’yon Royale Norton, is a 14-year-old, 8th grader, that has a heart of gold. At an early age, she was suddenly diagnosed with a severe heart condition, that could have been fatal if had not been discovered in time. She had emergent open-heart surgery at the age of 15 months. After much prayer from the community and family, Z’yon made it through the 6-hour procedure blessed with a renewed spirit and a SPECIAL HEART that began her giving ways and she has been giving to others ever since. While attending daycare around the age of 4 or 5, her mother and I began to notice that she started taking extra snacks and food to daycare. The food she was taking from home seemed to increase more and more each day. After a week or so we asked her what she was doing with the extra food. Her answer was, she was helping her schoolmates that did not have snacks for break and food for lunch. After another week or so, she decided to try to make sure her whole daycare was never hungry again. Once she made it to the 3rd grade, she started a pantry named “Royal Special Heart Pantry LLC.” She then began distributing bags of food to her fellow classmates on a monthly basis. She started doing a once-a-month good drive to collect food for her schoolmates. Her purpose for the food drives was to help keep her pantry at the school filled with goodies for her schoolmates. She has given out over 750 bags of food to the students at Beverlye Intermediate School for the Arts in Dothan, AL. She wanted to ensure that those who may have lacked sufficient nutritional substance at home had a chance to have enough food to take home for the week and especially the weekend. Her organization became a 501(c)3 Non-profit in 2021 and had a slight name change. The new name became “Royale’s Special Heart Foundation, Inc.” Z’yon now looks to expand her foundation to helping feed the whole Dothan City School System in years to come. 

 

#ItStartsWithAHeartToGive

#NoChildShouldGoHomeHungry