Making the Holiday Season Brighter in Southern Illinois

Children’s Home & Aid is so grateful for all of the support we received in our Southern Region this holiday season. Read below for all the details of our holiday events!

In Metro East…

Help for the Holidays – Over 300 families received gifts and monetary donations through our Help for the Holidays & 100 Neediest Submissions. Families expressed immense gratitude for the donations. One woman was moved to tears by receiving a Pioneer Woman pie dish because she loves to cook and has always wanted one. Another client said, “I can’t believe people are so nice!”

Thank you to Sam at Play It Forward, Hortica, Simmons Law Firm, Extreme Baseball & Softball, USAF 932nd Maintenance Team, St. Johns United Methodist Church, Paszkiewicz Court Reporting, Camp Creek Baptist Church, Express Scripts, Edwardsville High School, SIUE Sociology Class, and World Wide Technology for their generous donations and for providing amazing volunteers. The First Presbyterian Church’s “Needs Among Us” program also sponsored 35 families this year! These families will continue to receive year-round support.

Holiday Store – Our Holiday Store is a free store for families that weren’t sponsored or to supplement the gifts given to families by private donors. Children’s Home & Aid staff  “shopped” in the store for their clients – made up of two conference-sized rooms filled with toys from toy drives.

Donors for this year’s Holiday Store included: Books-A-Million, United Way’s Community Christmas Program, Papa John’s (Organized by Courtney Watts Collins), & Denise Fowler.

Shop with a Therapy Dog – This is the first year Children’s Home & Aid participated in this program. One of our Youth Services clients was sponsored, which impacted this struggling teen immensely. He had recently lost both of his parents and his grandmother to cancer. He said that he loves animals and had a wonderful time shopping for himself as well as for the dog. He was able to use some of the money to purchase items for the dog in addition to shopping for himself.

Thank you to all Children’s Home & Aid supporters who made the holiday season brighter for kids and families!