2017 Give A Christmas: Letters from Lower Bucks residents in need

By Chris Ruvo Correspondent:

In Bucks County, nearly 42,000 people live below the poverty line. Each one of them is a real person with a story to share.

During the holiday season, the Levittown-Bristol Kiwanis Club reads many of the hard-luck tales in letters financially struggling locals send in requesting help from Give A Christmas.

Now in its 60th year, Give A Christmas is a campaign Kiwanis conducts in partnership with the Bucks County Courier Times. It centers on collecting and distributing monetary donations to families experiencing financial hardship in Lower Bucks County during the holiday season.

To receive assistance, some residents mail in letters detailing their predicaments. Often handwritten, the letters make for heavy reading, say the Kiwanis members who pore over them.

Take the mother who was living in a hotel room with four children, including one adult child who, because of autism, functions at the intellectual level of a 12-year old. Another child, the letter related, has a bleeding disorder.

“We have nothing for Christmas,” the mother wrote in a letter sent in a few holiday seasons ago. “Can you please help with rent and Christmas? My children deserve Christmas. Anything, please. We really need your help!”

Meanwhile, another letter arrived from a 28-year old single father of two daughters below the age of 5. Heart problems led to him having to have a pacemaker implanted and his health has made it difficult to get back to work. All he wanted was to give his girls a Christmas. Similarly, a hard-working father of four, including twins under the age of 1, wrote in his letter about his tough year — a forced move after the family’s rental was sold, a knock back down the career ladder after the company he long worked for was bought.

“My kids are my whole world,” the father wrote. “They are very much looking forward to Christmas. Your help will make it a lot better. If there’s anything you could do, I would greatly appreciate it.”

Fortunately, through Give A Christmas, there is something Kiwanis can do to help the father and literally thousands of others like him laboring under the weight of economic hardship.

Thanks to generous donations from the community, families in need receive support, typically in the form of $25 vouchers for children, from Give A Christmas. The vouchers are redeemable at participating local supermarkets — Acme, Redner’s Market, Selecto Market — and other stores, including Barnes & Noble and Burlington Coat Factory.

Last year, Courier Times readers contributed $112,232.82 to Give A Christmas. Those funds allowed for the distribution of vouchers to 4,651 children in Lower Bucks County.

For the 2017 season, Give A Christmas aims to raise $120,000. That total would add to the more than $4.5 million that has been donated during the outreach effort’s long-running history.

Certainly, the support is appreciated — as was evidenced in the letter of a mother battling breast cancer who wrote for a little help to buy one small gift each for her two middle school age kids.

“If there is any way you can help make their Christmas a little happier,” the mother wrote, “I will be forever grateful.”

By donating to Give A Christmas, Courier Times readers help grant such Christmas wishes.

Sharing is caring