What makes a person spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars every year, re-purposing, repairing and giving hundreds of bicycles away to local children in-need?
Ask Kim Camara of Yesteryear Cyclery why he does it, the next time you see him!
1,800 individual socks were donated to us on Tuesday of Christmas week, from an extraordinary group of students at the Dartmouth Middle School.
According to our accountants, that is 900 pairs. At three pairs of socks per child, in every gift package we distribute, 300 local kids in-need will have new socks in January!
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Other photos HERE
It’s one thing for us to talk about what we do, it is entirely a better thing when a student volunteer talks about their experience. We are so proud of the students from Cardinal Spellman, and even prouder, if that is possible, of Charli.
Changing Lives One Gift at a Time.
By: Charli Carey
My name is Charli Carey, and I am currently a junior at Cardinal Spellman High School in Brockton. While preparing for our annual service day, several of my classmates and I struggled with the decision of which service site to volunteer at. Last year, as a sophomore, I volunteered at GiftsToGive, and knew that I wanted to volunteer there again, this time as a junior. I spoke with several of my classmates about what they were expecting when they volunteered to serve at GiftsToGive.
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Last Saturday morning we met a most remarkable girl, who did a most amazing thing!
We asked her Mom for details: “Caitlyn is a third grader at Pulaski Elementary School and she recently celebrated her 9th birthday. Caitlyn decided that she wanted to ask her friends to donate toys or clothing to GiftsToGive rather than receive gifts for herself. Through volunteering at Gifts to Give with her family, Caitlyn has realized the importance of giving to others”
Caitlyn says: “There are so many needy children with no special toys. I am lucky to have more than I ever wanted. These children are very brave. I wish that these toys will give them a happy surprise on their birthday!
Q: What do you get when you mix nine Berkley Brownies with 500 pounds of gently-used, children’s clothes donations?
A: Enough warm winter clothes, inspected, sorted and organized to help 24 local children receive a great gift package!
Photos from their afternoon are here.
Here is an email we received from their leadership team – ” Thank you so much for allowing our Brownie Girl Scout Troop to come and volunteer at GiftsToGive and showing them that they can be an important part of helping others no matter how old they are. We had such a wonderful experience. The girls, at eight and nine years of age, were saying things like “this was awesome”, “it was a good experience”, and that “it felt good to help”.
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We talk a lot, about the power of one. Today we are talking about the power of three; Alexia, Kelvin and Victoria.
On the first Saturday in April, it was blustery, rainy and promised snow! Saturdays are a busy day for us, there are usually over one-hundred student volunteers at the factory helping us inspect, process and organize tons of donations. In the middle of what we like to think of as controlled chaos, in come Alexia, Kelvin and Victoria with a ton of their own donations. They had collected all this wonderful stuff for local children in-need as a part of their SKILLS USA competition at Greater New Bedford Vocational Technical High School.
Parker students present GiftsToGive CEO Jim Stevens
with a check for $382.96.
With the support of Parker Elementary School Principal Paul Fay, teacher Tamara Wells-Reynold’s and her 4th grade After School Art Club raised $382.96, from raffle ticket sales of their art work.
Pack 32, Marion
Update: Monday, December 2, 2013 The Scouts of Pack 32 in Marion, made a huge difference today!
In November the scouts participated in their soap box derby and used the event to: help help a local family, collect donations for a food pantry and collecting “gently-used” children’s things for GiftsToGive.
This afternoon, after school, Pack 32 in full force – descended on the mill in a literal caravan of vehicles, full of not only scouts, but the treasure they had collected between themselves and other families in Marion.
Baxter House Students
The winners of Tabor Academy’s first quarter “Green Wars” competition, were the 25 young women in Baxter House! They collectively chose to give back.
Under the careful eye of the dorm’s “dean of green,” junior Sara Kosicki, the Baxter House residents were declared the campus’s best and most conscientious recyclers. As a result, money accumulated at the redemption center was given to the Baxter girls as a prize for their dorm’s thoughtful approach to caring for the planet. Rather than use the money for a weekend pizza party, the girls chose to use the money to buy socks and underwear. Why? Because they answered our call for help! Our supply of new socks and underwear, essentials many take for granted, is dangerously low. Hearing this, these amazing students acted!
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SKY Campers
An abundance of gifts came from the SKY (Summer Bible Camp) and found their way into the hands of hundreds of local kids in need, thanks to the children of St. Christopher and St. Theresa Parishes in Tiverton.
We met a remarkable group of faith-based, high school students this week. Photos from their visit are here. We asked junior, Anastasia to write about her experience. Here is what she had to say.
By Anastasia – “On November 4, 2015, fifteen eleventh-grade students from Cardinal Spellman High School, including myself, hopped in a bus and drove almost an hour to Acushnet for one of the most eye-opening experiences of our lives. As none of us had ever been to GiftsToGive or knew about everything it stands for, we quite frankly didn’t know what to expect for the trip. Despite this, though, the students and I were just as excited as ever to get to work and make a difference in the poverty surrounding our area.
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Matthew and Lily
We literally were overwhelmed with a huge donation of great new toys and other items on Saturday from FOUR year-olds, Lily and Matthew.
We work everyday at receiving donations from some very remarkable people, lots of them children, but this donation was overwhelming for us. It was overwhelming not only for the volume of the things we received but for how and why they came to us. We were so busy the day they arrived we really didn’t get to hear the whole story. We emailed their mother and asked for details. What we got back was the best email in recent memory.
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