It all started in 2007, while Reona Burnett was washing her car, when she heard a voice, who she believes was God, telling her, “The people, people are hurting, people are sad,” particularly women. This was her calling to help the people in her community.
Burnett and her husband are based in Hattiesburg and are working with Boots on the Ground by Project GAP which she is the executive director/founder. She works within many organizations such as Diamond Excursion Party Bus Rental, Reign Hall Event Space, Diamond Excursions Ladies’ Edition and Due Logistics, LLC/ Eric Burnett Trucking LLC.
Burnett and her husband are now working on the MS Hub Complex which is planned to be a resource center for the homeless or those who just need help. The building is an old hotel building on Hwy. 49 in Hattiesburg. They plan for it to be a center with showers, laundry and other resources to help others get back on their feet.
Burnett started her journey by sharing her divorce story to other women in her community in Clinton. Her sharing her personal, emotional story was not what she intended to do to help the women in her community, but she did still do it. She told women about men and how her experience with her ex-husband made her the woman she was. She went from a college girl to a wife and a mother, thinking she was going to have a “fairytale” ending to having nothing and starting over.
Later in 2019, she moved to Hattiesburg and worked in a local daycare, but due to the Covid-19 Pandemic the daycare shut down. She wanted to continue to be in the community, so she moved to Purvis during the pandemic. She started to rescue dogs and take care of them in her own home. She dedicated herself to taking care of the dogs every day since she could not go anywhere during the pandemic. Later on, she gave five of the dogs to their forever homes and her and her family kept two of them.
While Burnett was taking care of the dogs, her and 10 ladies started an organization called the Diamon Girls which was a part of her current husband’s, Eric Burnett, party bus business. This is where her story with non-profits really began in 2020.
They began going out in their communities and shinning different ladies.
“A shine is like a token, it can be a cup, we had people that were doing grocery shines, cash shines,” Burnett explained. “The shine is just the happy, to bring hope, and joy to an individual.”
She was challenged to do 100 shines in only seven days which she bravely took. She grabbed her two youngest kids, and they were off with a little over 100 shines, filled with peanut butter crackers and drinks, in her car to different towns in Mississippi. They went from Hattiesburg, to Canton, to Vicksburg and all the way down to the Gulf Coast.
During one of their last stops, Burnett came across this young lady. Reona and Eric refer to this as the “hamburger” story. As Burnett was giving the woman her shine, the woman asked, “Can I get another one for my husband?” Burnett said yes because she had extras in her car just in case.
The woman said to Burnett that her and her husband could only afford a McDonald’s hamburger and have to split it between each other some nights. Other nights, they would have nothing to eat. This touched Burnett and she told her husband, “Can you imagine us getting one hamburger?”
She thinks of the small cheeseburgers from McDonald’s and having to not only split it but to have to scrap up change to be able to afford said cheeseburger. That night, her and her husband brought the woman food to her trailer, her home, but Burnett was not satisfied with only giving them one meal.
Burnett sent a group message to her group of 10 ladies asking if anyone has any food in their fridge or pantries that they will not use and willing to donate it to the woman. They agreed and her plan was to pick it up the next day. She still was not fully satisfied, so she went through her own fridge and pantry and found food for the woman.
She dropped the trunk full of food to the woman and her husband, but yet again Burnett was not satisfied. She realized that she did not know how long this couple has gone without food, and that did not sit well with her. The next day, she went around and got more donations and called the woman asking to come by again. The woman agreed. This time Burnett came by with not only her trunk full, but her whole back seat was full of donations for this couple. The woman said, “Oh my, we don’t even have enough room to put all of this food inside.”
Burnett told her she would rather than have an overflow than not enough at all. She told the woman to share with the others who live around her because she did not know their situation everyone may be in.
