Meet N.J.'s Black Fairy Godmother. She’s raised $150K for women during coronavirus.

Simone Gordon Helps Those in Need

Simone Gordon, known on Instagram as @theblackfairygodmotherofficial, has been helping people across the country via her Instagram page. She received a Webby Award for her good deeds. Amanda Brown | For NJ Advance Media

A single mother of three in Pennsylvania is behind on rent and bills. Her 7-year-old son has Kawasaki disease, a rare inflammatory syndrome.

Another single mother in Alabama prays for better days after losing family members to COVID-19. She just got a job but can’t cover the security deposit on the home she plans to move into with her toddler.

And in Arizona, a single mother of two worries about her kids overheating in 100-degree weather. She works to support her children and brother, as well as her mother who is in the hospital with cancer. But she can’t afford an air conditioner.

Simone Gordon shares stories like these every day on Instagram, asking people to open their wallets and cover basic needs like baby formula, clothes, rent, medicine and groceries. Her account, The Black Fairy Godmother (@theblackfairygodmotherofficial), has become a base of operations for direct giving, generating urgent aid for Black women and women of color.

Gordon’s grassroots network of volunteers regularly saves the day when community and government resources fall short.

“It was a beautiful thing, but then COVID-19 came," Gordon, 33, tells NJ Advance Media. The Bloomfield resident saw her daily requests triple from 30 to more than 100.

Despite having lost her part-time waitressing job to the pandemic, Gordon says that during the first two months of the coronavirus crisis, she raised $150,000 for women and children in need. And she managed to do it while finishing the college semester and caring for her 10-year-old son, who has nonverbal autism.

In May, Gordon won the Webby Special Achievement Award “for using social media to aid women of color who have been severely impacted by COVID-19.”

Homeless in a pandemic

When Gordon learned about the award, she thought it was a put-on.

“It was just unreal," she says. "You don’t hear about people who come from small cities and towns in New Jersey getting these type of things.”

For mothers like Isabella in Kansas City, Missouri, Gordon’s work is all too real.

Isabella, 28, who prefers to be identified by her first name, had been sleeping in her car for almost a year when she found out about The Black Fairy Godmother. At first, she was skeptical that anyone would actually help.

But in the middle of the pandemic, with shelters packed, Gordon was able to get a hotel room for Isabella, her 6-year-old daughter and baby. She secured groceries for the family and had volunteers bring them water. For Mother’s Day, she arranged for Isabella to receive flowers and dinner. After the month at the hotel was up, she moved the family to an Airbnb.

“I am just so thankful for her," Isabella says. “She is just doing so much for all of the single ladies out there. Really, that’s a blessing. If it wasn’t for Simone I would still be homeless, living in my car,” she says, her voice cracking. “She’s an angel."

Black people in New Jersey have been dying at disproportionate rates after contracting the coronavirus disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that during the pandemic, there has been “a disproportionate burden of illness and death among racial and ethnic minority groups."

If GoFundMe, PayPal, Cash App, Venmo and wishlists from Amazon and Target are the method, Gordon’s Instagram account is the message. Whether it’s $425 for a mother in California, $290 for a mother of a special needs child or grocery gift cards for a senior citizen, the needs are constant and specific. A link in her bio tells contributors — she currently has more than 21,000 followers — where and how to give.

A group of 12 volunteers across the country work to manage the asks and donations. Every request Gordon receives is vetted through social media and video chat. She also has volunteers abroad, in places like the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Greece.

Felicia Gershberg, a volunteer in Sunnyvale, California, got involved by giving money. Now she helps by managing donated funds, making hotel reservations, paying electric bills and placing Instacart orders for women in need.

“You can give $25 to a big nonprofit and it feels like a drop in the bucket, but when you go to somebody’s Amazon wishlist and buy a package of diapers you know exactly where it’s going," says Gershberg, 55.

Simone Gordon

Simone Gordon working on a Christmas wishlist and dinner for families.Simone Gordon

During the health crisis, Gordon has rushed assistance to women in her hometown of East Orange, like Angela Bynum.

Bynum first got in touch with Gordon when she was volunteering to feed the homeless in Newark. She wanted to know if Gordon could help with donations.

In August, she lost her ability to walk. Then she lost her job at a pediatrician’s office.

“It just so happens that I became homeless myself," Bynum, 48, tells NJ Advance Media.

In the middle of everything else, she found herself taking care of a teenage cousin who she says was abused by a family member. But Bynum only qualified for $16 in food stamps each month.

“I can relate to women not being able to have food," Gordon says. “People don’t understand there’s a lot of girls who are working as essential workers but they’re only getting food stamps that are $100 or $200. Formula doesn’t cost a dollar, formula costs $10, $20 a can."

Gordon had groceries delivered to Bynum’s home in March. At various other times, she has helped Bynum with rent and a hotel room as well as money for a bed, clothes, TV and laptop for her cousin.

“If it wasn’t for Simone, I don’t know what I would’ve done," Bynum says. “She’s the fairy godmother, yes she is.”

The beginning of ‘something big’

Gordon’s Black Fairy Godmother mission started years earlier, with another a single mother in need: herself.

Living in Orange, she had lost her job at a bank and was working various temp jobs. Some of them lasted a month, some barely a few weeks.

By 2016, she was struggling to cover basic needs, like diapers and formula for her son. She came across a Facebook group called Reparations: Requests & Offerings. The group, founded by the Seattle poet and conceptual artist Natasha Marin, is a project designed to address income inequality. People of color are invited to ask for something they need and white people are invited to offer services and support.

Gordon posted her needs in the group. Four women in Maryland, California, Washington and Pennsylvania reached out to help. With their assistance, Gordon was able to get supplies for King (her son’s nickname). They also paid her outstanding college bill for $768. Gordon had left Essex County College in 2008, but because the women also covered the cost of tuition — $2,500 — she was able to return. She now has one year left until she earns her associate degree in nursing. Next, she plans to study online for a bachelor’s degree and pursue a degree in public health at Rutgers University in Newark.

Gordon says she’s able to assist other women because she moved in with her parents, who helped her get out of a physically abusive relationship with her son’s father. She prefers not to share details of her encounters with domestic violence, but says the experience helps her connect with many of the women she posts about.

“I see myself in them,” she says. A “visit” from The Black Fairy Godmother can often help women avoid homelessness after a domestic dispute. Gordon knows that domestic violence and poverty don’t let up because there’s a pandemic.

She started fundraising in 2013, gradually branching out from MySpace and Facebook, where she focused on mothers of children with special needs. Gordon embraced the Black Fairy Godmother name in 2016.

“It’s just a women empowerment type of thing and it grew into something big," she says.

Soldiers in a direct-giving army

Gordon saw support for her work grow even more after two authors shared her efforts. Soon, her initial 100-follower count spiked by the thousands.

First came Jennifer Pastiloff, author of the memoir “On Being Human." Pastiloff, who is also known for her yoga workshops, met Gordon before she started her own Facebook group and encouraged her to get on Instagram. Gordon started passing along requests and Pastiloff shared them from her account.

“She’s one of my dearest friends now in real life," Pastiloff tells NJ Advance Media. She was able to raise $140,000 to feed those in need during the pandemic by following Gordon’s example of direct giving.

“The reason that people trust her and want to help is that she’s in the trenches," Pastiloff says. “She’s doing the work for no personal gain except to be kind ... She’s channeled by something greater than herself.”

After Pastiloff amplified The Black Fairy Godmother, Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat, Pray, Love” and “City of Girls" and noted Hunterdon County local, began sharing Gordon’s mission with her audience of nearly one million followers.

“There’s something so incredibly satisfying about helping her because the cry goes out on Instagram that morning and by the next day, someone has been possibly saved from homelessness,” Gilbert tells NJ Advance Media. “I just feel incredibly fortunate that I’m part of her life and I get to be part of her mission, a soldier in her army, really.”

“Most of my followers are white women," she says. "It’s a long overdue and growing awareness of white women that call themselves feminists that we haven’t done enough to honor Black women in this culture and that needs to be remedied and that needs to be repaired and that needs this to be restored.”

Katie Kime, 34, a volunteer in Frenchtown, began following Gordon on Instagram after seeing a post from Gilbert. Kime had time to spare this spring after being laid off from her job at a coffee company, so she got in her car to shop for and deliver groceries to a senior in East Orange.

Even after deliveries arrive, Gordon maintains connections with the women she helps, often assisting with jobs, housing and school. In 2017, she raised $1,000 for Teresa Akins in one hour. The money allowed Akins to move out of transitional housing with her teenage daughter.

“I’ve never met her in person,” says Akins, 46, of Aberdeen, Maryland. “I’ll just check to see how she is because she’s doing so much. She’s amazing. She says she does not sleep and that is the absolute truth. I will see her online until 1 or 2 in the morning and back online at 5 or 6."

In the time since that big save, The Black Fairy Godmother has returned to wave her magic wand over phone bills and school supplies, Akins says.

“The name fits her well.”

The Black Fairy Godmother is on Instagram @theblackfairygodmotherofficial.

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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Send a coronavirus tip here.

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