Pop-Up Shops Bring Mother's Day Gifts to Domestic Violence Shelters Nationwide

Children living in domestic violence shelters across the United States will have the chance to choose a Mother's Day gift for their mom and "pay" for it not with money, but with a written self-affirmation. The Gift of Giving Store, a traveling pop-up initiative founded by New York City attorney Jacqueline Newman, transforms shelter common rooms into child-friendly shops stocked with cozy blankets, handmade jewelry, pampering kits, and other curated items in the weeks ahead of the holiday.

The payment model is the program's defining feature. Every purchase requires a child to write a positive statement about themselves, with prompts including "I'm proud of myself for…" and "One thing my mom loves about me is…" turning the act of selecting a gift into a structured moment of self-reflection. The organization frames its core premise directly: "When children are given the opportunity to give, they grow in confidence, self-worth, and love."

The scale of the population the program reaches is striking. More than 84,000 survivors and their children are served in a single day across U.S. shelters, according to the initiative's materials, a figure that illustrates how many families will be marking a spring holiday inside a crisis setting rather than at home.

Newman, managing partner at Berkman Bottger Newman and Schein LLP in New York City and author of "The New Rules of Divorce" (Simon and Schuster, 2020), built the program around the specific emotional reality of children displaced by domestic violence. Her background as a nationally recognized matrimonial attorney has kept her close to families in crisis throughout her career; the Gift of Giving Store extends that proximity into a space where the holiday itself can feel entirely out of reach.

The pop-up format matters as much as the gifts themselves. By converting a shelter common room into a functioning shop, even briefly, the initiative recreates a familiar holiday ritual in an unfamiliar place, and asks every child who participates to write down something true and good about themselves before walking out the door with a gift for their mother.