Time To Play Santa For Our Neighbors—

Holiday Baskets Need To Be Filled

By Shannon Hicks

The Newtown Fund has launched its 2007 Holiday Basket Project, an annual undertaking that helps everyone in town have a happy holiday season following an appeal for donations of clothing, food, blankets, and/or gift cards. Residents and businesses are encouraged to sign up to adopt a family that will receive gifts on Delivery Day (formerly called Depot Day), this year to take place on Saturday, December 15.

The town’s Department of Social Services provides information about the needs of families and individuals, often senior citizens, who are to be the recipients of the holiday baskets. The requests of the recipients are outlined, but their names are kept confidential.

On Delivery Day the donated gifts, food items, and gift cards are brought by volunteers to the school, where other volunteers wrap the items and organize them before they are delivered by other volunteers to needy families across town. Last year 79 families had better holidays thanks to the Holiday Basket Program.

There are four ways individuals, couples, families, and groups or businesses can help this project. The first way is by “adopting” a needy family and making a commitment to provide nonperishable food items for a holiday meal for the family as well as gifts for each family member. Contact Rick Mazzariello, who is handling matching families to donors this year, at 270-9190 if you would like to adopt a family.

The second is by making a financial contribution to the Newtown Fund. Donations will help purchase necessities and any additional food needed to complete many of the baskets on Delivery Day. Tax-deductible checks should be made payable to The Newtown Fund and mailed to PO Box 641, Newtown CT 06470.

The third is by making donations of food, new clothing, and new toys. These will be to be dropped off on Delivery Day between 7:30 and 9 am, and will also be used to complete baskets that are being delivered that day.

Tag-A-Gift trees have been set up at three locations to help the public buy toys for this year’s wish lists. Ornament tags have been created by the members of Middle Gate Brownie Troop 157, and the tags have been put on trees set up at the Newtown Savings Bank branch in Sandy Hill Plaza; Wesley Learning Center, behind Newtown United Methodist Church at 92 Church Hill Road; and Union Savings Bank, 1 Commerce Road. The trees will be left up until Monday, December 10, to give people enough time to pick up an ornament and go shopping before the toy needs to be dropped off on Delivery Day.

Finally, members of the community can volunteer to deliver the holiday baskets to the adopted families on the morning of December 15. Contact Mr Mazzariello (270-9190); baskets will not be available for delivery until 11 am.

More than 40 years ago, the late Joseph Chase and Rev Paul Cullens were instrumental in delivering the first holiday baskets and creating The Newtown Fund, a nonprofit organization that addresses special needs in the community. At year-end, this includes “adopting” families that have been in contact with the town’s social services department and making sure they have a holiday meal, gifts of clothing, toys, and other household staples such as warm blankets and sheets.

The deadline for applications for the holiday basket program has officially passed, “but if people show up at our door looking for some help, we’re not going to turn them away,” a spokesperson at Newtown Social Services said this week. Mr Mazzariello echoed those sentiments.

“It’s a busy time of year for us, but that’s what we’re here for,” said Mr Mazzariello, who is also the secretary for The Newtown Fund.

Anyone who thinks they may qualify should contact the social services department at 270-4330 right away.

“Right now we have 60 families who are definitely in, but we still have applications coming in,” he said. “We usually get in the area of 75 to 80 families, and sometimes it goes over the 100-family mark. It just depends on the kind of year it’s been, where families find themselves during the holiday season.

“A lot of groups help us — churches, families, businesses help us each year,” he continued. “We have 40 families already adopted this year, but there are still many people who will need some help. There are a number of single people and couples, adults and senior citizens, who need to be adopted.”