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Holiday volunteers say it’s better to give than receive

More than 400 county residents donate to growing gift program for needy area families

Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo J. Adam Fenster⁄The Gazette Sioux Thompson loads her car with holiday gifts she’ll drop off at the county’s Child Protective Services department. Thompson of Silver Spring, like other individuals, businesses and schools around the county, spearheaded a gift drive in her neighborhood for needy families.

A few hours and $500 later, the Silver Spring resident hadn’t just given her wallet a workout — she had helped a needy family of five.

Martin is one of about 400 residents around Montgomery County who spread holiday cheer this year by donating time, money and shopping expertise to help abused and neglected youth in the community.

‘‘Christmas is a time that is so hyped up that you forget how lucky you are. There are people in our own backyards who can barely make it,” said Martin, 57, an interior designer who shopped for two teens, two toddlers and a mother. ‘‘It gives people a chance to have those extras in their lives that they normally wouldn’t have.”

What began as an impromptu gift donation from one major retail store has grown into an organized and elaborate effort by individuals, businesses and schools to help those most in need — the impoverished children and teens referred to the program by Montgomery County’s Child Protective Services.

This year, 650 children had their wish lists fulfilled by these altruistic efforts.

‘‘It’s unbelievable how the community will participate in this if you give them the chance,” said Ilene Heiney of the county’s Child Protective Services, an organizer of the effort. ‘‘It gives gifts to children who probably wouldn’t normally get them.”

The informal program began about five years ago when Heiney, who answers the county’s child abuse hotline, received a call from a Saks Fifth Avenue department store representative about donating clothes to the office.

Heiney took the donation. And when the word spread, the donations grew.

Social workers, neighbors, teachers and religious organizers from Bethesda to Rockville to Gaithersburg soon began promoting the donations in their communities, until the once ad hoc system grew into a collaborative and organized charity effort.

Today, social workers collect wish lists from their clients, and volunteers take to the malls and shopping centers, buying sweatshirts, basketballs, Barbie dolls, grocery store gift cards and the like for less fortunate children and parents.

It fulfills a gaping need, Heiney said. Though religious organizations and nonprofits collect such donations during the holidays, Heiney said, the county had no formal program for its own clients. Many of those who benefit from the donations are teens about to age out of the foster care system and who need a fresh start, she added.

In Montgomery County, there are 41,122 people living below the poverty level, according to 2005 estimates of the U.S. Census Bureau.

About 9,500 of those are children under the age of 18.

The halls of the Child Protective Services department overflowed with gifts last week as social workers prepared to distribute them to their clients.

The gifts poured in from school employees in Germantown and Gaithersburg who pitched in gift cards. Wachovia Securities, 1st Savings Morgan and Fitzgerald Auto Mall adopted several families. Bartenders collected money in tip jars to donate. A motorcycle group, the East Coast Busas, bought presents for toddlers and teens.

The list, Heiney says, goes on and on.

Sioux Thompson of Silver Spring spearheaded the collection in her community through a neighborhood listserv. It has grown steadily from 12 people the first year to 18 to, now, 30.

Some donate because they have more than they need, she said. Others want to do something for the less fortunate during a season of giving. And yet others, Thompson said, use it as a teaching tool for their own children.

‘‘It’s become more than a donation drive here,” Thompson said. ‘‘They really have these families in their hearts and their minds for the holidays. People are telling me, ‘I don’t know when I’d more powerfully felt the Christmas spirit.’”