Confidentiality Is One Reason

Newtown Fund’s Holiday Program Works So Well

By Shannon Hicks

As the holiday season kicks into gear, The Newtown Fund continues to receive calls and notes from people who are interested in volunteering for the organization’s 2007 Holiday Basket Project. This annual undertaking does its best to ensure that everyone in town has 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 Saturday, December 15, at Sandy Hook School.

On Delivery Day the donated gifts, food items, and gift cards are all collected at the school, where other volunteers wrap the items and organize them before they are delivered by other volunteers to needy families across town. The names of families who would like to benefit from Delivery Day is provided to The Newtown Fund by Newtown Social Services. Last year 79 families had better holidays thanks to the Holiday Basket Program. This year the count is up to 60 families, and that number is bound to increase before Delivery Day arrives.

There are four ways residents can help. 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 Newtown Fund secretary Rick Mazzariello, who is handling matching families to those interested in adopting families this year, at 270-9190.

The second is by making a financial contribution to the Newtown Fund. Donations will help purchase necessities and any additional food needed to complete 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 should 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. In order find out what specific items are on this year’s wish lists, Tag-A-Gift trees have been set up at three locations. Newtown Junior Women’s Club is in charge of the Tag-A-Gift trees this year, and 90 ornament tags were created recently by the members of Middle Gate Brownie Troop 157. The tags have been put on trees set up at the Newtown Savings Bank branch in Sand Hill Plaza; Wesley Learning Center, behind Newtown United Methodist Church at 92 Church Hill Road; and Union Savings Bank, 1 Commerce Road.

Residents are invited to pick up an ornament and go shopping for the item requested on that ornament, and then return the new, unwrapped item to the location where the Tag-A-Tree ornament was picked up. Gifts should be dropped off by Monday, December 10, so that NJWC members have time to coordinate what was received and what will still need to be purchased before Delivery Day.

Finally, residents 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.

Confidentiality Is Key

While this is a great program that people of all ages and most financial situations can help out with and the feeling of helping another person is especially strong at this time of the year, The Newtown Fund reminds residents that they will not directly meet the people they are benefiting. A letter to the editor in last week’s Newtown Bee erroneously stated the volunteers will meet the families for which they are providing holiday help.

Confidentiality of the families, couples, or individuals who receive these gifts through The Fund is one of the main reasons the holiday program continues to be so successful.

“We don’t even know the names of the families we provide to,” Jo-Ann Dempsky, a member of The Newtown Fund, said this week. “Social Services gives each family a number, and that’s what we use to keep track of who receives what.

“Also, if you adopt a family and decide to also be a driver on Delivery Day, you do not deliver to the family that you have just finished purchasing for,” she stressed.