Ashley Manning of Charlotte, North Carolina, is at the heart of love for many widows in the city. Through her nonprofit organization, Valentine’s Day Widow Outreach Project, 1,000 women who lost their spouses are being gifted flower bouquets in 2024 — the largest number of women the organization has served to date.
It all started in 2021. Ashley, a former pharmaceutical rep and mother of four, is married to her college sweetheart. She also runs her own floral shop, Pretty Things by A.E. Manning.
In starting the nonprofit, Ashley wanted to focus on making sure that women who had lost their spouses still felt special on Valentine's Day. The widows are chosen through nomination, and they receive flowers and other gifts (like wine, jewelry, snacks, and desserts).
The gifts are bought with donations, and hundreds of volunteers gather to put the baskets together. "Each gift costs us about $60 with donations and wholesale pricing," Ashley wrote on her Instagram. "However, if you were to buy the flower arrangement, vase, wine, sweets, and treats it would cost more than $300!"'
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In 2022, Kay Deco was nominated by her daughter. Having been a widow for over 25 years, she was deeply moved by the surprise. "We [widows] are kind of like a forgotten element sometimes," the 71-year-old said. "It was just such a beautiful thought and it made me feel so special that somebody would take the time to make something so beautiful with flowers and pass it on to widows."
The project currently runs in Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Nashville, Houston, and Hutchinson, Minnesota. While some people want the gifts delivered to their nominee anonymously, others choose to be the one to deliver. “They want to hug the person they give it to,” Ashley said.
She went on to open up about how she's been in love with flowers ever since she was a child. "I would make flower arrangements for my friends for their birthdays and put things together," she said. In 2021, before Valentine's Day, an idea popped into her head.
Via Instagram, she asked her followers one question: How are we going to take care of the women in our community who aren’t going to get flowers? From there, the seeds of her project were planted.
"Both of my grandmothers were widows. My mom’s mom had 12 children and my dad’s had eight. I never met my grandfathers and they never remarried," she shared. "My son’s preschool teacher had [also] lost her husband. When I heard that, my heart just broke." In 2021, she delivered bouquets to 121 widows. In 2022, the number jumped to 400 and doubled to 800 in 2023.
This year, by partnering with Meta and Upworthy to expand the project to a national level, she raised $60,000 through social media and private donors. "There’s hurt and pain everywhere," Ashley shared. "Seeing how people come together is such a testament to the fact that we need this in our world."
