WeSeeU: Inside George Kimble, Family's Efforts to Give Back

George Kimble’s father told his relatives not to buy his son toys anymore.

Kimble wouldn’t often play with the toys that he was given. He would never put down his basketball in order to do so. You’d nearly have to pry that thing out of his hands as his family arrived to the grocery store or to church. “He was always a ball kid, not a toy kid,” his father said.

When Kimble’s mom received a call from her brother–who knew a family of five kids that weren’t going to receive Christmas presents as a result of their mother being in prison and asked if the Kimble’s could help–Kimble finally found something to do with his toys.

“Would it be okay if I gave them my unopened toys?” Kimble–who was a kindergartener at that point–asked his parents after hearing them discussing the avenues they could take in order to help out the troubled family.

Kimble’s parents had no objections to their son’s request and “blessed” the five children and their father, who was trying to give them a memorable Christmas at the time and had “kind of given up” before the donation. The spare toys that Kimble gave away that day sparked something in his parents’ minds, though.

“That was the start of our non-profit,” Kimble’s father, George, told Vandy on SI. “We went from five kids that year to blessing right around 300 kids a year every Christmas.”

15 years–and Christmases–later the Kimble family still runs the WeSeeU non-profit organization out of Tampa, Florida. The organization works to “inspire hope and provide assistance to hardworking individuals by supporting youth and families with various physical, educational and financial needs through community outreach initiatives throughout the year.”

Each year the community outreach organization aims to make an impact through their Holiday Angels program–which provides gifts for families in need and allows donors to sponsor a family each winter. The Kimble's organization also makes an impact through a “reading buddies” program that supports children in underserved schools as well as a financial literacy program, a program to support college-bound seniors and a heartfelt letter writing campaign.

“It’s important for me and my family to have this charity,” Kimble told Vandy on SI over the summer. “We are able to get out to the right people and have many resources to help.”

Kimble is still actively involved in the charity despite spending most of each calendar year away at college. The now Vanderbilt guard took his Eckerd College teammates and coaches to be involved in distributing and packing up gifts around Christmas time in his freshman year of college.

The Kimble’s are plugging along with their mission to help hard working, underprivileged families, but aren’t forgetting about their son’s initial impact on their services.

“He has a heart to serve,” Kimble’s mother, Tanya, told Vandy on SI. “He’s always had that from very little. That’s where the non-profit was founded because of his heart at a young age to serve and to give. He is responsible for the organization being what it is and for us being able to bless thousands of kids every year.”

WeSeeU has recently evolved into supporting back-to-school backpack drives, providing gift baskets to residents of nursing homes and sending handwritten thank-you notes to teachers, first responders and active-duty service members.

Kimble’s parents believed that he’d be “special” at whatever he chose to do as a result of him being delivered in a complicated birth process, but now they believe they’re seeing it as he assists them in being a “blessing” to others in the Tampa area.

“You’d ask him ‘where’s your so and so, man?’ and he’ll answer ‘I gave it to so and so,’” Kimble’s father, George, said. “He’s always just been very active in helping us do what we do.”