Comfort Jungle was founded in 2018 as an online clothing boutique with the intention of providing financial help to single parents while their child is in the hospital. Later, they expanded their philanthropy to include all aspects of a child’s life such as providing funds for school lunches, supplies, clothing, and sports.
The goal is to help children grow up in a healthy and comfortable environment without financial burdens. No child should ever be excluded from activities because of their family’s inability to fund it.
75% of the profits through the sales of our online boutique are used to help these children and their families. You can support them too by purchasing a shirt like the one I am wearing or head over to the online boutique! Grab a Kombucha and read my interview with the founder of this amazing organization, Harley Bird.
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Hi Harley! Tell us a bit about yourself.
Harley Bird, 25 years old, born and raised in Maine by a single mother. I currently manage a sports bar in Maine and I work on my boutique during any downtime that I have. Hopefully I’ll be able to do it full time eventually.
Most people work to afford the lifestyle they want to live. I’ve always worked to be able to be the person people go to for help. I think it’s a rare thing in life to have people that give and expect nothing in return and my goal is to be that type of person. I was raised by a single mother and had a lot of health issues when I was growing up. I was in and out of the hospital having procedures and surgeries since I was 3 months old. My mother was always there for me. She always chose to be with me in the hospital instead of working. Even as a child I could see the burden it put on her. Even though she was there with me in person, I could always tell there were other things weighing on her mind.
How did you come up with the name Comfort jungle?
I’ve always considered this world to be a jungle. It’s crazy, messy, scary, but can also be incredible at the same time. Money is one of the most uncomfortable things to talk about in this world, especially if you’re having financial troubles. My whole goal is just to make life a little more comfortable. Especially when it comes to situations that aren’t necessarily in your control.
I actually contact the social workers at various children’s hospital and use them to refer the single parents to me. Social workers are the people that parents communicate with about payment plans and the different ways to pay the medical bills. Once the referrals are received, the company writes a check directly to the parent so they can use the funds for what they need, even if its just gas money to drive to and from the hospital.
Can you explain how you also connect with school?
For the schools aspect of our philanthropy, we contact various school districts and set up a Comfort Jungle Fund within the school that children can use if they don’t have money in their lunch accounts, or want to participate in after school activities such as sports or clubs that their families can’t afford to pay the entrance or equipment fees for.
75% of all net profits are put directly into a separate account that we use to write the checks to the schools and parents. I currently don’t have labor costs since it’s just me and I don’t pay myself (I live off of what I make from the restaurant) so that helps keep the profits as high as possible.
So how does comfort jungle, as a boutique, operate?
I am a one woman show. I taught myself how to screen print and heat press so I make all of the logo tees from my apartment to keep costs low. I package everything up myself, and ship it out. My apartment has turned into a small distribution center.
There are two different types of items on my website. First are the logo tees. They are jersey cotton, which makes makes them nice and soft. These make the biggest profit and allow me to help more people since they have a lower cost. The second are the boutique items. These are various clothing items that depict a lot of my personal style that I have chosen from various clothing distributors. I try to keep prices relatively low while still making enough of a profit to help those in need.
Where do you see comfort jungle in the future?
The future. Ahhhhh the dreams! I would love for this to one day become my full time job. Eventually I would like to actually create a non-profit fund where people can donate to and that the 75% of our profits can be put into. I would love to be able to eventually help everyone in need (I realize that’s a lot to accomplish). My goal is to create an awareness in the community that makes others want to help as well.
Hosting various fundraisers such as town carnivals or kickball tournaments (or just anything people will have fun being at).
Being able to sponsor wishes for Make-A-Wish and making a child’s last moments everything they could ever want
I would love to get kids involved and have canned food drive competitions where school districts from all over the country can compete with each other for an awesome prize (like the top class from the winning district gets an all expense paid trip to an amusement park of their choosing). Before they can go on the trip, the kids would all spend a day at the food pantry serving food to the homeless.
All in all, I just want to end up being a place where people feel comfortable asking for help from. The worst feeling in my opinion is someone asking you for help, and you not being able to provide any.
If you want to check out comfort jungle for giving Tuesday head over to their websites or instagram!
