Volunteers fulfill Christmas wishes of fostered kids
Nonprofit group works with CPS to allocate toys
Lorie Durousseau fought back tears as she walked into a Heights warehouse Saturday morning to find tables stacked with donated puzzles, action figures and board games.
For years, toys like these helped Durousseau through the holidays in foster care.
Now, more than two decades after aging out of the system, she was ready to give back, joining dozens of volunteers to fulfill the holiday wish lists of children in Child Protective Services.
“This opens the floodgates for me,” said Durousseau, 41. “You don’t know where you belong. You don’t know who loves you. And then Christmas comes around, and you get a gift.”
Durousseau and her sons were among more than 100 volunteers at the annual event to pair wish lists with toys donated to the nonprofit BE A Resource for CPS Kids, or BEAR.
The local organization, founded in 1997, receives gift requests from Harris County CPS caseworkers each fall, solicits donations to meet them and prepares gifts for children ahead of the holidays.
“For many people, the holidays bring back good memories and memories of family and home and food and togetherness, but it’s not that way for everyone,” Harris County Protective Services spokeswoman Estella Olguin said. “With our kids, it’s just another reminder that they’re not home with their own families, and so giving them some happiness being that they’re going to be away from their own families is what we want to do.”
As of Saturday morning, BEAR still needed to fulfill more than 5,600 of the 10,600 wish lists it had received.
To that end, volunteers armed with coffee and pastries lined up in BEAR’s warehouse to get cards printed with children’s three wishes, then scoured donation tables for items that matched.
Melissa Saldaña had little trouble finding presents for an 11-year-old girl, Ashley, who wanted nail polish, hair accessories, fuzzy socks and a board game, of which there were plenty.
“I like Jenga. Not everybody else might like Jenga,” Saldaña said as she sorted through the game section, ultimately settling on Zero, a trivia game.
The Clear Lake resident was volunteering for the second year in a row, and she hoped the experience would help reinforce for her 16-year-old daughter and her friends how fortunate they are.
“It’s a blessing — what we have — so being able to help somebody else ... it brings you back to reality and keeps you humble,” said Saldaña, 36. “We don’t want them to take anything for granted.”
Others had a harder time matching toys to wish lists, particularly as the piles of donations for older children dwindled.
Mia Hoyle was hunting for a watch for a 9-year-old boy, Steven. She couldn’t see any watches on the donation table, though, so she tried to find a wallet. No luck there either.
Hoyle, 45, ultimately settled on a football.
“You can’t go wrong with a football for a boy,” she said.
Alvin Adamson, of Pearland, needed to get creative for Gabriella, a 15-year-old who wanted wireless headphones, nail polish and an instant camera, none of which were available by late morning.
He picked out a tablet and an mp3 player before heading to the beauty section.
“Nail polish makes me think she’s a girly girl,” said Adamson, 43, as he selected moisturizer and a bottle of perfume.
Even after Saturday’s event, BEAR staff estimated they needed gifts for some 4,800 children.
“It’s an overwhelming feeling, just because people don’t realize how many kids out there don’t have or go without,” Saldaña said.