Would you volunteer your time to help kids at Christmas?? ( Archived) (21)

So, I spent 5 hours today working at a local charity going through gifts, logging them in, sorting them out, and then gathering the families groups of gifts. Once thats done you have to call the families to come and pick up their gifts. So that sounds like it is easy, but this charity does over 900 children, and the gifts are pouring in faster than we can log them in!! Then there is the fact that including me who had never been there before and had no clue what I was doing, there were only 5 people there. You have phones ringing every 30 seconds, people bringing gifts every few minutes, families coming to pick up gifts every few minutes, and you have to get all of this done at the same time. I dont answer phones, but I make calls to families whose gifts are ready to go, and I sort out all the gifts and try and get them into family groups. The room that these gifts are in is no where near the size it needs to be, so there are trails in between tables and stacks of bags, boxes, and bikes. Until today, they only had three people there helping, so the place is a MESS!! The gifts are numbered from 1 to 900 something, and there are only 5 tables to put them on. They have a table for 100's, 200's, 300's, 400's, and the rest go all on and around another table which has no method what so ever.

I tried so hard to get the tables organized today, but you can only do so much in the few minutes between people dropping off and picking up gifts. I managed to straighten out the 100's table, my sister came to drop off her gifts, and I recruited her for about an hour, so she did the 200's table before she took both of our three year old kids- who were helping wonderfully!!- then I got the three hundreds table sorted too. Thats as far as I got!! The room where the gifts were dropped off got filled up over three times while I was there, and they were there for hours before and after I left!!

I took a tag for a three year old little boy, turned out he has three brothers who nobody had picked yet. So I felt bad and wanted to get the others some stuff too. Then my friend- the daughter of the founder of this charity- showed me the over flow room!! WOW!! You wouldnt believe this room, there are clothes, electronics, toys, and just anything you could imagine all over the place, on under and around the tables, just like the tables with the donated gifts for the kids. So tomorrow is the last day for people to drop off the gifts, and any of the kids who have not gotten a gift bag, we get a bag, grab their tag, read their size and what they want, and make bags for all of them. There were 50 kids who didnt even get put on tags, and 400 who by the time I left had not had any gifts brought in. They said there would be people coming in all day tomorrow and that these kids should get most of the gifts tomorrow.

So, it was all kinds of crazy and hectic, and guess what, at 9 in the morning, I will be right back up there, three year old in tow, working until 2 30 when I absolutely must leave to be home when my son gets out of school.

These charities really need help, especially right now because the one I am working for is down to crunch time, and they still have hundreds of families to get gifts ready for. If there is any way you could find one and help them, I know-especially after the day I had today- that they would REALLY appreciate it!! Normally the tags on the trees have an address and phone number on the back of them, so if you are interested, then just call and I am sure they will put you right to work.

So the question is, would you, have you, or wouldnt you help out with one of these charities to give underprivelaged kids Christmas gifts that their families wouldnt be able to give without that help?