Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Holiday Sharing effort needs support
CADCOM’s Holiday Sharing program in need of businesses, individual donors
NORRISTOWN» More and more Montgomery County businesses are encouraging their employees to play Santa for CADCOM’s Holiday Sharing program so that low and moderate income families can enjoy a nice Christmas.
But with the number of benefactors not quite where it needs to be this year, individuals and businesses alike may need a gentle nudge in a Yuletide direction.
“We’re truly grateful when folks are committed to helping others but we have a huge waiting list of families who need to be ‘adopted,’ and we’ve been taking applications since the beginning of November,” noted Heather Lewis, director of resource development for CADCOM. “We can only go as fast as the donors that we have and we’re in the process of emailing out information and updating our database.”
The way it works is that CADCOM, which took over the giftgiving program from Community Housing Services in 2013, requires beneficiaries— who can be small or large families or seniors — to fill out applications and then it matches them with the generous people interested in shopping for Christmas gifts for the families.
Donors are a diverse group, but they do have one thing in common: Armed with vital information, such as the genders and ages of their adopted family members or senior individuals, and of course, the essential wish lists, they love to hit the stores.
“Yes, our donors love to shop,” Lewis said, laughing, adding that it’s more and more common to find groups pooling their resources and working together in adopting families.
“You can definitely be a part of group while not necessarily having a lot of money to adopt a family yourself. You can designate what size family you want to adopt, whether it be a single parent with a couple of children — whatever you believe your budget can support.”
When it comes to businesses, the Holiday Sharing begins and ends with the employees who choose to take on the responsibility, Lewis explained.
“It’s usually a staff person who takes the lead, so it’s not necessarily the business itself, it’s the employees of the business that support the program,” she allowed. “Usually it’s an individual that hears about the program and wants to help and they end up coordinating the of-
fice. It depends on how big the company is. We have some small insurance companies where the whole office is participating.”
Among the companies and organizations participating in “Holiday Sharing” are LaPlaca Insurance Co. of Lansdale; Einstein Montgomery Medical Center, East Norriton; Result works LLC of Audubon; multiple departments from
PMA Insurance Co. of Blue Bell; Reckner & Associates of Chalfont; Quest Diagnostics of Plymouth Meeting & Harleysville; Travelers Insurance of Plymouth Meeting, Norristown; Class of 1977, Norristown Area High School; Royersford ATA Martial Arts; Christ Church of the Valley; IFax Solutions; Montgomery Township Public Works; Lower Salford Police Station; ICW group of King of Prussia; Anytime Fitness, Norristown; CLX Logistics of Blue Bell; Reilly Glazing of Norristown; Rubin Glickman, Steinberg &
Gifford Law firm of Lansdale; American Heritage Credit Union; Wells Fargo Bank; Citizens Bank, UHS Inc.; Cadient of Malvern; Crossfit Montco and Ferrandino & Sons.
“Many of the larger corporations adopt more than one family,” Lewis said. “For instance, Einstein employees adopted 16 families ranging from single seniors in need to grandparents taking care of their six grandchildren. Some donors have experienced their own personal crisis, loss and or downsizing that could have
negatively impacted the program; however, their commitment to continuing to assist those in need prevailed. One donor told me his mother passed away last Christmas and it was really hard for him, but adopting a family kind of helped him get through mourning the loss of his mother. Just last week he told me he lost his father also, so now he’s had another huge loss around the holidays, but he has shared that it’s been very therapeutic for him to focus on the needs of others instead of his own loss.”
In addition to 10 families still waiting to be adopted this year, there are 50 families on the waiting list, Lewis said.
“We have some new clients, so we really wanted to focus on folks that had never been in the program before, folks that all of a sudden had some type of life circumstance happen that caused them a hardship,” Lewis said. “We felt we needed to prioritize these people who had never utilized our service before and try to work with them. We were also able to partner with another
organization called the Help a Single Parent Foundation,” Lewis added, “to get 10 families from our waiting list assistance.”
To adopt a family or support the program via gift cards or gift items for older children contact Heather Lewis at 610-277-6363, ext. 166 or hlewis@cadcom.org.
The drop-off location for gifts is the CADCOM office at 113 East Main St. Norristown.
“We’re now into our last minute push,” Lewis said. “So many people’s Christmases depend on this.”