Through Precious Dreams Foundation, Nicole Russell delivers calming techniques and items of comfort to help children in transition find the rest they need.

Nicole Russell hastily finds parking at a Target on the way to her Comfort Drop at a Bronx family shelter, hoping to pick up enough pillowcases for the more than 20 young participants who await her arrival. Tonight, she will lead the children in creating designs on their new pillowcases to inspire their last thoughts of the day to be ones of comfort.

Russell runs an organization called Precious Dreams Foundation, which she co-founded with her mother in New York in 2012. Knowing that the only time children or teens in transitional housing are left alone with their thoughts is when they go to sleep, Russell created the organization to emphasize the necessity of comfort items in kids’ lives. She developed what she calls Comfort Drops to serve children and teens in homeless shelters and the foster care system so they might sleep better while living in transitional housing.