Standard Times Story HERE
GiftsToGive Volunteer Jillian Zucco is crowned Miss Massachusetts!
Jillian is truly a bright and shining light and for us a most perfect example of giving and service.
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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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Question: What is better than Girl Scout Cookies?
Answer: Girl Scout Philanthropists!
We hosted our “First Annual Crafts Fair For A Cause” last Sunday. Fifty-five Vendors came to sell their wares, among them was Fairhaven Brownie Troop 65427 and boy did they sell a lot of cookies!
What could be better than that you ask? They collected and donated 153 children’s books for us to re-purpose.
Read More »Every once in-a-while, we’re flabbergasted and we don’t flabbergast easily!
Nicole Long, one of our earliest adopters wrote last week – “SO PROUD of my niece Abby and her cousin Georgia: over Christmas vacation they brainstormed a charitable organization called “GAB” and collected over $100 in one weekend to help people less fortunate. This morning, Abby gave me the money… (Which is being matched by their Grandmother Blair!) to deliver to GiftsToGive and I can’t think of a more beautiful start to a new year. Love these girls and their giant hearts.”
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.
Cardinal Spellman Students
This week we met sixteen students from Cardinal Spellman High School in Brockton.
Photos from our day are here
We talked as a group about child poverty, the importance of education and graduating high school. We talked about giving, philanthropy, making a difference, social justice, big citizenship, the power of one, the power of a group and then we went to work. These sixteen students inspected, cleaned and processed enough great stuff to allow us to help three dozen local children in-need. How great is that?
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Student Intern, Molly
Molly’s quest to collect 1,000 gently used sports balls has hit snag after snag, then last week something positive happened.
The back story – Initially Molly went to the Bruins and asked for help in the form of a player coming to New Bedford and she and her hockey team would host a skating event. The Bruins could not send a player but did offer some of their surplus equipment – so that is working itself through. Then Molly went to the Celtics for help and they also could not send a player down to New Bedford. (You can see Molly’s letters to them below).
The positive thing that happened last week came in the form of Boston University and FYSOP! Sixty-eight incoming BU freshmen spent two days at the mill helping us process clothes (we were at the critical process place of swapping out summer clothes for winter clothes and getting ready for back to school.) See that story here.
Last week we received an email from Anthony Moccia asking to be connected to Molly. Who is Anthony Moccia you ask? Anthony is a senior at BU and was one of the chaperones for the the visiting BU freshmen. Here is Antony’s email –
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Youth Philanthropist Olivia
We see thousands of student volunteers every year, most are amazing! Some are extraordinary and then there is Olivia. To call Olivia super extraordinary or unbelievable, would be an understatement!
Olivia has volunteered with us for five months and in that time has directly helped hundreds of local children receive clothes, books, toys and other basic essentials. Recently she arrived with bags and bags full of brand new items to donate.
We asked her to tell us in writing what was going on and here is what she told us – ” I was first introduced to GiftsToGive while on a field trip with my fellow classmates and teachers from the Albert F. Ford Middle School here in Acushnet. After spending half of a school day volunteering in the building, I decided I would begin coming back throughout the summer. Through the course of the summer I worked to assemble clothing packages for children. When I first assembled the packages, I was blown away by how many orders there were to be filled.
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We see thousands of students every year – sometimes we ask one of them to write a story of their experience. Sometimes one of their stories makes us stop what we are doing and listen – really listen.
Today we are listening to Gabriela; you should too!
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Students from Worcester Academy made a field trip to visit with us last week. Photos from their visit are here. We ordinarily would talk about the experience, but teacher David Baillie was kind enough to send us the following:
“Community. We’re about community.”
“This was the response of a student to a seemingly simple question: “What is Worcester Academy all about?” The question, posed by GiftsToGive founder Jim Stevens, hung over the fifty Worcester Academy students for several heartbeats before it was answered.
We had traveled that Saturday morning from Worcester to Acushnet to fulfill a community service obligation, a school-mandated requirement that is part of every student’s experience. The fifty boys, all upper classmen, were dorm mates; they boarded the bus that morning without complaint, napped or talked or joked around for the hour it took to get to Acushnet, and then assembled in the bare-bones repurposed warehouse that served as the factory’s base of operations.
Elizabeth and her friends helped girls they did not know have happier Birthdays!
When we talk about special children, we talk about Elizabeth!
Ten year-old Elizabeth celebrated her birthday in a most amazing way!
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CamRon Frazier receives the Presidential Service Award!
What does the President of the United States and Sophomore, CamRon Frazier have in common?
Last Saturday night, at our First Annual “Rising Tide” event, we awarded New Bedford High School Sophomore CamRon Frazier, the Presidential Service Award.
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