Helping hands get gifts to kids

While many con­sider the hol­i­day sea­son to be the best time of the year, for many it can be a stress­ful time try­ing to find the right gifts for all the peo­ple on their lists. It can be even more stress­ful for low-income fam­i­lies who can’t come up with enough money to even get gifts for their own children.

Ober­lin Com­mu­nity Ser­vices reached out and offered a help­ing hand to 130 area fam­i­lies on Fri­day after­noon to try and make the hol­i­days more fes­tive with their Hol­i­day Help­ing Hands program.

Accord­ing to OCS exec­u­tive direc­tor Linda Arbo­gast, this year marks the 57th year the group has offered such a pro­gram to fam­i­lies in need.

“This is the high­est num­ber of fam­i­lies we’ve ever had come to us for assis­tance,” she said. “Over the last five years, it has increased every year.”

The pro­gram enabled OCS to help 358 chil­dren get gifts this year that may not have received any otherwise.

Spon­sors from around the Ober­lin area receive wish lists of the chil­dren and then pur­chase the items for them. The donors also wrap the gifts and then drop them off at OCS, who then dis­trib­utes the pack­ages to the families.

“Over the years, we have accu­mu­lated a list of groups, churches, and orga­ni­za­tions that spon­sor. In Octo­ber we send out a let­ter ask­ing if they are inter­ested in help­ing once again, and if so how many kids are you will­ing to spon­sor?” Arbo­gast said.

The staff at OCS has their work cut out for them at times, though, espe­cially when money is tight due to eco­nomic trou­bles all over.

“After a cou­ple weeks after we have all the spon­sors signed up, we usu­ally end up with about 25 kids who aren’t spon­sored, and then we start call­ing and ask­ing our spon­sors if they can help out a lit­tle more,” Arbo­gast said.

The chil­dren tend to get at least a cloth­ing item and a toy, though often they get much more due to the gen­eros­ity of the sponsors.

The com­mu­nity room at OCS was filled with wrapped gifts rang­ing from bicy­cles to electronics.

“It really runs the gamut this year, and peo­ple have been so gen­er­ous this year. We’re kind of amazed,” Arbo­gast said.

The gift donors are free to spend what­ever they want on the gift, since OCS doesn’t put a set amount on what each spends. Arbo­gast said the aver­age price spent on each child is around $60.

“We would like to thank the many, many indi­vid­u­als, groups, churches, and civic orga­ni­za­tions who have worked to sup­port fam­i­lies in need,” Arbo­gast said. “It is cer­tainly heart warm­ing to know the extent to which our com­mu­nity is will­ing to give to oth­ers dur­ing this dif­fi­cult eco­nomic time.”

Posted by Scott Mahoney on Dec 21 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.