For years, the MOMS Club of Millstone Twp, NJ has been giving back at Christmas. Their chapter has been participating in the Giving Tree and they are the only organization in town that does it. Each Christmas, they receive the families’ wish lists from the Millstone Twp department of recreation, who in turn receives the information from the board of education who identifies the families by which students get free or reduced-price lunch. All names on the wish lists are blocked so the recipient families are anonymous.
Once they have the lists, everything is entered into a form on volunteerspot.com and chapter members are invited to view the list and choose what gifts they would like purchase. The gifts are dropped off, wrapped and labeled with family number and member letter (e.g., 3B), at the chapter president’s house. Then, the Friday before they drop the gifts off at the municipal center, they have a “wrapping party.” This is when they organized all the gifts, wrapped the few that weren’t wrapped, and made sure all family members with wish lists had gifts and that siblings had equal or close to equal numbers of gifts. This year they were up to midnight, there were so many gifts! Almost all of the 50 chapter members participate in the service project.
Chapter president, Stacy, said “It’s so wonderful to see people coming together to provide Christmas gifts to families who would otherwise not have any. As you can see from the picture, we had A LOT of gifts to drop off!”
It took both an SUV and a minivan to get all the gifts brought in!!