With Joy Box, Turlock family puts its own spin on the wishing-well idea
First his community, then the world. Levi Navarra wants to spread joy, and the little guy thinks big.
At age 5, the Turlock boy convinced his parents, Amy and Dan, to host a neighborhood pancake party. Invitations were delivered, a bounce house and games like bean-bag toss and an oversize Connect 4 were set up, candy sprinkles were stirred into the pancake batter, and Chef Amy got to work behind a camp stove.
Eighty people attended that day, which celebrated the first week of school, and Amy made about 360 pancakes. A neighbor brought eggs and cooked those up, too.
Levi also pitched an idea to take every kid in Turlock to Disneyland, but looking back on the plan, the now-6-year-old explained last week why that clearly wasn’t doable. “If we got everybody to Disneyland, everybody would have been tired out.”
Of course.
So instead, the family — which includes 3-year-old twins Davis and Lincoln — brainstormed and went another direction. On or about Jan. 10, the Navarra Party of 5 Joy Box went up in the yard of its home at the corner of Smith Drive and North Johnson Road.
A “How it Works” sign posted at the box reads, “Anyone and everyone is encouraged to place a need, hope, dream wish or desire in our box. No request is too big or too small, our goal is to one day be able to grant them all! Our plan is to collect them all once a month and make as many come true as we can for those who have put a note in our box! So please grab a paper, fill it out and drop your need, hope, dream wish or desire in our Joy Box.”
Last week, a dozen or so helium balloons were clipped to the box’s post. They were there to draw attention to the Joy Box, but also for passing children to take. The Navarras have been putting out such goodies, like La Mo Cafe gift cards one week, cookies the next, “for people to just stop by and grab,” said Amy, a caterer who owns and operates the Savor Charcuterie & Cheese in Turlock.
The family set up an Instagram page, navarrapartyof5, to help spread the word, and already have more than 380 followers. The first submission the Navarras found in the locked box was a pleasant surprise: a $10 bill with a note that said the donor needed nothing but wanted to contribute to someone else’s wish.
The first “ask,” Amy said, was a family’s wish for a weekend at a beach because every extra dollar has been going to pay off debt.
She and Dan expected big “dream wishes,” as they call them, as well as little requests, and the 18 or so submissions they’d collected as of Wednesday include both. Someone would love $8,000 to pay off debt and make a down payment on a house. A little girl wants some outdoor toys or play equipment. One in-between request is for a bathroom entry to be widened because the person asking now uses a wheelchair, which won’t fit through the doorway.
“The part we didn’t anticipate,” said Dan, who leads the men’s and high school ministries at Monte Vista Chapel, “was people saying, ‘Hey, let me Venmo you 50 bucks.’ ‘Let me give you some gift cards to give out.’ ‘Hey, if you have somebody who needs a construction project, I’d love to donate my time.’ That’s been the part of the goodwill I don’t think either one of us saw coming. ...
“And so we don’t want to take any of the wishes, no matter how big they are, and throw them away and say, you know, we’ll never get to that one. Because we don’t know what somebody else’s generosity, combined with what we can do ourselves as a family, may actually end up allowing us to do.”
Another thing they didn’t anticipate, Amy said, was the nonmaterial requests. One mother asked for help in sleep-training her children. Others have reached out about “grief, loneliness, the different epidemics that are plaguing people,” she said.
Some of the wants, needs and wishes may be a lot for Levi to wrap his 6-year-old head around, but Dan and Amy want him to play a role in trying to fulfill them. With the new month here, it’s time for parents and eldest son to spread out on a table all the January requests to decide what can be handled immediately, what they can start doing some legwork on and what has to be set aside for now.
“I’m hoping that will be a training opportunity for him to kind of think about how, hey, not everybody gets to live like we get to live, they don’t have the privileges or things that we have,” Amy said. “And then talking to him about that and letting him say, ‘This resonates with me, I would like to do this one. I think we should do this one.’ He’s probably gonna say we’re gonna do them all.”
Because their last name isn’t Warbucks and because they have three boys, the Navarras don’t intend the Joy Box to be all about writing checks to fix problems. “We’re not doing a gofundme, we’re not trying to be a fundraising thing,” Dan said.
The couple are building a list of resources to tap into, such as contractors who can assess an ADA remodeling need, or counselors on grief and depression, or child psychology. In the case of the woman who wants help getting her kids to sleep, Amy said, “We could maybe go back to her and say, this is not our level or area of expertise, but this is a resource that we’re willing to hook you up with. We’ll try to pay if there’s a monetary thing, but maybe it’s just getting in touch with a resource.”
In keeping with the name of their effort, the family hopes that a lot of what it can do truly brings joy. As Levi sums up his Joy Box idea, “We want to spread joy to our community and the world.”
This story was originally published February 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
