A young boy at a food distribution site was wearing a birthday hat with nowhere to wear it — no party, no cake, nothing planned to mark the day. That single moment, about a year ago, stuck with then-15-year-old Reyha Raghavaraju and eventually grew into Birthday Bundles, a nonprofit that now delivers handmade cakes, gifts, and handwritten cards to families sheltered across metro Atlanta.
Raghavaraju, now a senior at Alpharetta High School, founded the organization after that encounter, according to CBS News Atlanta. Since becoming fully operational in the spring, Birthday Bundles has delivered its personalized packages to more than 136 metro Atlanta families, the station reports, with roughly a dozen student volunteers helping keep the effort running.
A Neighbor Joins the Cause
One of those volunteers is 14-year-old Saira Sharma, Raghavaraju's neighbor and friend, who helps bake and write the cards that go inside every bundle. Per the same CBS News Atlanta account, Raghavaraju considers those handwritten notes and homemade treats the defining hallmark of what makes each delivery feel personal rather than transactional.
The bundles do not go out at random. Birthday Bundles partners with local shelter organizations to identify families and children who might otherwise go without a celebration, including youth crisis shelter Covenant House Georgia and family shelter Nicholas House, according to CBS News Atlanta and volunteer listings shared on Reddit.
The Shelters Behind the Deliveries
Nicholas House has a long history in the city, having been founded in 1982 as Atlanta's first long-term family shelter program; the nonprofit's own records state it accommodates approximately 250 homeless family members each night. Covenant House Georgia, meanwhile, reports that more than 3,300 youth experience homelessness annually across metro Atlanta, and that half of young people aging out of the state's foster care system become homeless within six months of leaving care.
Behind the scenes, Birthday Bundles operates as an Alpharetta-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit, according to volunteer recruitment records published on Idealist. The listing notes the organization supplies its own baking ingredients and offers flexible, remote schedules for volunteer bakers, a structure that has helped it scale up its dozen-strong student volunteer base.
Founder Ties Celebrations to a Bigger Problem
Raghavaraju has not framed her project as a fix for hunger itself. In a guest column for SaportaReport, she pointed to Feeding America data showing that nearly 500,000 Georgia children face food insecurity, with county-level rates ranging from 9% to 45% across the state. The column draws a distinction between the emotional lift of a birthday celebration and the deeper, ongoing need for consistent access to food that many of the same families face.
That distinction echoes broader efforts already underway in the region. Hoodline previously reported that Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens launched the emergency ATL CARES initiative, authorizing the Atlanta Community Food Bank to deploy $5 million from reserves to address surging food insecurity across the metro area. Raghavaraju's nonprofit operates on a far smaller scale, but it taps into the same landscape of need that has prompted both grassroots and municipal responses.
Outside of Birthday Bundles, Raghavaraju has kept up a busy academic schedule. She qualified as a 2026 Georgia Governor’s Honors Program semifinalist in social studies and competes on Alpharetta High School's varsity policy debate team, according to school announcements published in February. For now, her focus remains on making sure kids in shelters across metro Atlanta don't spend their birthdays without a cake, a card, or someone who remembered.
