Wonderfund ensures holiday gifts for DCF kids

able to accomplish?

A: Our goal, as you know, is to be able to reach every single one of the 50,000plus children who are engaged with the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families. Our goal for our first year was to be able to double the number of children that we were able to reach last year, and I’m thrilled to say that we are well on our way to be able to achieve that goal. We’ve already hit our fundraising goals for the year, so we’re going to keep building on this momentum and hope that it helps us reach every single child.

Q: It’s amazing how it seems holiday gift-giving is happening earlier and earlier every year. And you guys have a holiday gift drive, right?

A: We do. It’s a big project and we are collecting donated gifts from all over the commonwealth and trying to ensure that every child who is engaged with DCF who needs a gift gets a gift. It’s a great program and it’s working really well. The thing we’re focusing on right now is making sure that we have gift cards for teenagers because, as you probably know, teenagers are kind of difficult to buy gifts for. We’re finding that our teenagers, like every teenager really, would love to have a gift card so they can choose for themselves what they really want.

Q: When does that start and where should people go if they want to help out?

A: We started to list donated gifts probably in September, but we still have plenty of children who would love to be sponsored. So if anybody wants to get engaged with that they can go on our website, which is wonderfundma.org and click on the Holiday Gift Drive and we’ll be able to connect you with either a child wish list or a place where you can send a donated gift.

Q: How long do people have to get involved?

A: The sooner the better. We’re going to try to distribute all of the gifts by about mid-December, so we need to collect them and get them to each of the 29 area DCF offices in the next couple of weeks. So the sooner the better, but we’re willing to take donations any time of year for any amount.