holiday charities

[amethystmoon.livejournal.com]

Can anyone give me info on any of the following:

Places selling Christmas trees to benefit a charity. I know of the Foss Park sale to benefit the Somerville schools - anyone know the times for that one?

Places doing food drives, or looking for soup kitchen volunteers

Places where you can get a kid or family's name and what they want/need, and pretty much provide their Christmas. The church my family used to go to would have a tree with all these index cards on it, and you could take a card, and it would have a kid's name, age, gender, and measurements, and a list of what clothing and other essentials they needed, as well as a few fun things they wanted. People treated it as if they were buying presents for their own kids, and then they'd bring them unwrapped to the church with the tag. I'd love to do something like that, because you know for certain someone is getting stuff they'll appreciate, whereas with something like toys for tots, the kid may not be all that interested in the toy they got.

Comments

[heliopsis.livejournal.com]

First Congregational Church of Somerville (just a few blocks up College Avenue, we're the big, beige church on the right with the rainbow flag and the purple doors) hosts a dinner for homeless people every Monday night; there's a number of groups who actually prepare and serve the meal, but there's always room for a volunteer.

We are taking a service trip to an orphanage in Mexico in January, and one of the things we're doing for that is taking simple gifts to the children. We have a list of suggested items--this isn't quite as personal as you were looking for, but it's close.

You can call the church office at 617 625 6485 for more information.

[ellf.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the trees or the gifts, but I'm running a food drive at the company I work for, with the food going to the Somerville Homeless Coalition.

Anyone interested in donating canned foods should contact me; we're wrapping the drive up on Friday, December 23rd.

[joylewis.livejournal.com]

Kmart in Assembly Square has a tree with kids names on it, but beware: the gifts are things like iPods, PS2s, cell phones, etc. Also, the kids on the tree are aged 16-18, as far as I could see. No clothing sizes were given.

Salvation Army used to have an Angels tree at the Cambridgeside Galleria, but I don't know if they're doing that now (or if you want to brave a mall).

[desiringsubject.livejournal.com]

Too late for this year, but I just found out about this: Pie in the Sky (http://www.pieinthesky.org/pages/home_noflash.html). Buy holiday pies for charity.

[hissilliness.livejournal.com]

Helping Hand Food Pantry at St. James' Church in Porter operates year-round. They prefer cash to canned goods, 'cause the emergency food system means that your dollar in their hands can buy a whole lot more food than it can if you take it to Shaw's.

They'd love volunteers to help give out food to their clients on Thursday afternoons or Saturday mornings, if you can make a four-week commitment.

You can contact them at helpinghand@stjames-cambridge.org (mailto:helpinghand@stjames-cambridge.org) or by calling 617-876-4381.