LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Earlier this year, 8 News Now asked viewers to tell us about an outstanding woman in the Las Vegas valley.
Shon Murray’s name rose to the top. She is a mother who has helped shape her son’s dream of giving dignity to foster children and improving the lives of so many others.
For five years, this mother and her son have incubated an idea into a meaningful nonprofit called Klothes for Kids.
“If she wasn’t right here, none of this would have happened,” her son Nigel Murray said.
Nigel and his mother still remember the day a young foster child arrived at their home with nothing more than a garbage bag. That moment changed their lives.
Nigel told his mother he wanted to do something about that.
“So we figured the way that we could help these children have dignity is to at least — going from house to house — they have a nicer bag,” Shon Murray said. “Something that simple you wouldn’t think it mattered. It really does matter,”
That’s how Klothes for Kids was born. It provides children and teens living in foster care with duffel bags of clothes, shoes, and necessities. Shon Murray is the director and Nigel is the visionary.
“She was there to help guide me along, teach me how to handle all of these adult things while I’m 14 years old,” he said.
In the five years since they’ve touched the lives of nearly 4,000 foster kids. It started with some donated clothes and now it’s a houseful of new wardrobes. Each room is dedicated to the age of the child.
“When you think of the value of this child and the dignity; they are already going through a hard time. We want to give them the best of the best,” she said.
While growing the charity and navigating its future, the pair share a special bond.
“We connect on a business level and after we leave here we’re mom and son. Yeah, that’s my biz partner and my mom at the same time,” Nigel said.
Although she is the biological mother to one, her mission is to love, serve and support as many children as she can.
When she discovered that a child who can’t read by the time they’re in the third grade is more likely to go to prison, she launched a reading program to fight the “school-to-prison pipeline,” a term commonly used to describe the alarming number of black and brown children who are funneled from schools into prisons, due to illiteracy.
“I think if we would pour generosity into our kids, empathy, and compassion that’s how we’ll see the world change,” she said.
she’s changing the world by making the ordinary — extraordinary.
“I feel like it’s just doing ordinary things every day even in the mundane,” Shon said. “You never strive and say I’m going to do this today because it’s remarkable. It’s just there the beauty is in the mundane.”
Taking mundane moments and making them memorable. Shon Murray dedicates herself to embracing children, empowering women, and elevating the community.
