Author: distroteam

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.

By Chris Ruvo:

In the smiles and laughter of children, Mary Berman saw the magic of Give A Christmas at work.

For 45 years, Berman was an educator in Lower Bucks County. When she’d return to school from Christmas break, she’d listen to the talk of smiling students happily discussing their holidays. And she knew, that for some, donations to Give A Christmas — an annual campaign that benefits locals struggling with financial hardship during the holidays -- had helped make that joy possible.

“I often saw the end result of someone opening their hearts to donate to this cause,” Berman said.

Indeed, she recalls the young boy who said to a teacher that for Christmas he only wanted the electricity turned back on in his apartment so he could drink hot chocolate and look at his Christmas tree. A donation turned that wish into a reality.

“Give A Christmas makes an impact on the community even with the smallest of donations," Berman said.

Readers of the Bucks County Courier Times have a chance to be part of the good-doing by contributing to this year’s Give A Christmas campaign.

Now in its 60th year, Give A Christmas is an altruistic initiative the Levittown-Bristol Kiwanis Club conducts in partnership with the Courier. It centers on collecting and distributing monetary donations to families experiencing financial hardship in Lower Bucks County.

The support comes in the form of $25 vouchers for children that are redeemable at participating local supermarkets — Acme, Redner’s Market, Selecto Market — and other stores, including Barnes & Noble and Burlington Coat Factory. Senior citizens in need may also receive vouchers after the requests from families with children have been met.

“Many of us feel that Christmas is having a gift under the tree,” said Berman, a Kiwanis member. “We don’t realize that for some families their Christmas is being able to go to the store with their ‘Give A Christmas’ voucher to buy food and put a Christmas meal on the table.”

In 2016, Courier Times readers generously contributed $112,232.82 to Give A Christmas. That money enabled the distribution of vouchers to 4,651 children in Lower Bucks.

This year, Kiwanis Club and the Courier are calling on the community to help achieve a more ambitious fundraising goal — $120,000. Of course, any funds that come in are welcomed and will add to the more than $4.5 million the campaign has raised over the decades.

Make no mistake: The money is needed. In Bucks County, nearly 42,000 people — that’s approximately 6.6 percent of the population — live below the poverty line.

But with Give A Christmas, locals have a chance to alleviate some of the strain on their neighbors in need – to help more children return to school from the holiday break with smiles on their faces.

As Berman said, “Giving makes a difference.”

By Chris Ruvo:

“I am hoping that some way, somehow, I can help them."

So said a mother from Lower Bucks County about her young children and their hopes for the holiday season.

She expressed the heartfelt desire in a letter pleading for help from Give A Christmas — the holiday season campaign that collects and distributes monetary donations, typically in the form of vouchers, to families experiencing financial hardship in Lower Bucks County. Levittown-Bristol Kiwanis Club partners with the Bucks County Courier Times to meet families' needs.

As the mother explained, she feared her kids’ holiday spirit would be broken Christmas morning if they came to find no gifts — a real possibility, given that she could not afford to provide them.

Certainly she had tried, working extra hours six days a week. Indeed, after having benefited from Give A Christmas the year before, the Lower Bucks woman had hoped to donate to the fund the following year.

But when the holiday season rolled around, she simply didn’t have the money — for her family or for others. Her husband was out of work with serious injuries and, despite her intense work schedule, she could not make ends meet.

“I am not sure where we will be in a few months let alone how I am going to provide Christmas for all our children,” the mother wrote.

Thankfully, Give A Christmas stepped in to help.

It was able to do so because of the generosity of Courier Times readers, whose donations fuel the good performed by Give A Christmas, which is now in its 60th year.

This week, readers have an additional reason to contribute to the campaign: Giving Tuesday.

Started in 2012 and occurring annually on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, Giving Tuesday is a movement that encourages individuals, businesses and other organizations to generously support charities, events, fund drives, social do-gooding outfits and the like during the holiday season.

“One of the best ways to get involved is in your own community,” the Giving Tuesday website states.

Give A Christmas provides Courier Times readers the chance to get in on the local giving — something they’ve already been doing with resoundingly positive effect over the decades.

Through the years, caring contributors have donated more than $4.5 million into Give A Christmas, helping to bring necessities, gifts and hope to neighbors facing hard times.

Last year alone, Courier Times readers donated $112,232.82 to Give A Christmas, which benefits people of all religious backgrounds. The funds enabled organizers to disperse 4,651 vouchers to children in Lower Bucks County. The vouchers are redeemable at participating local stores. In 2017, those stores include supermarkets — Acme, Redner’s Market, Selecto Market — and other retailers, including Barnes & Noble and Burlington Coat Factory.

“We have to help our neighbors in need,” said Howie Kay, a Kiwanis volunteer involved with Give A Christmas.

Unfortunately, the help is sorely needed. In Bucks County, 6.6 percent of the population — some 41,818 people — are living below the poverty line.

Many are like the mother who simply wanted to preserve the magic of the season for her children. They work hard, but are laboring in jobs that don’t pay enough to cover the high cost of living here. Others have been affected by health issues that led to bank account-crushing medical bills for them personally or their immediate family. Still others are elderly, infirm, stuck on fixed incomes that pay for less and less each year as costs keep climbing higher.

For many of these Bucks County residents, the holidays aren’t a time to rejoice, but another reminder of their difficult situations.

But when Courier Times readers empower Give A Christmas to step in and help, there’s a respite from that harsh reality.

There’s hope. Sometimes, too, there’s inspiration to pay it forward when better days return.

“I hope in the years to come that I can give back to your organization more and more,” the mother from Lower Bucks wrote.

Tap into that spirit of generosity in your own heart and, on this Giving Tuesday, contribute to Give A Christmas.

By Chris Ruvo: 

The letter cut Patti Stracci to the quick.

In it, the member of the Levittown-Bristol Kiwanis Club read about the plight of a single mother who was requesting help from Give A Christmas, an annual holiday season fund drive for the area’s less fortunate residents that Kiwanis conducts in partnership with the Bucks County Courier Times.

As the letter related, the single mother of three was trying to get back on her feet following surgery related to a serious illness. The woman wanted desperately to give her children a Christmas. She also asked, humbly, if it would be possible to obtain a bed frame. So honest was the woman, that she enclosed in her letter three unused, expired vouchers from the previous year’s Give A Christmas. She had not able to spend them due to her illness, which had required hospitalization.

“She expressed such sincere appreciation for our previous generosity to her family and was asking if we would again consider their request for assistance,” said Stracci.

Kiwanis was happy to provide.

“Aside from the vouchers provided by the GAC fund, a community furniture store donated the bed frame and assorted linens were donated by some of our members,” said Stracci. “And, because Mom was preparing to finally return to work and was still working on getting a vehicle of her own to get her there, it became my pleasure to ease her worry and concern by making sure everything was delivered to her apartment in time for their holiday.”

The vouchers and furniture, of course, wouldn’t have been possible without the donations of generous Lower Bucks County residents and businesses who answered the call of Kiwanis and the Courier Times to donate to Give A Christmas.

Running this 2017 holiday season for a 60th year, the campaign centers on collecting and distributing monetary donations to families experiencing financial hardship in Lower Bucks County.

While called Give A Christmas in the spirit of good will and generosity traditionally associated with the Christian holiday, the assistance the campaign provides is available to people of all religious backgrounds.

Typically, the money is dispersed as $25 vouchers for children. The vouchers are redeemable at participating local supermarkets — Acme, Redner’s Market, Selecto Market — and other stores, including Barnes & Noble and Burlington Coat Factory.

Certainly the donations are needed, for poverty has a home here in the suburbs, with 41,818 people in Bucks County living below the poverty line. That’s 6.6 percent of the county’s population.

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.

In 2017, Give A Christmas aims to top last year’s tally. The goal is to raise $120,000 — a figure that would add to the more than $4.5 million that has been donated to the fund drive over its decades of history.

Stracci encourages everyone to donate to the fund, for in giving, she said, one receives a wonderful gift in return — the feeling, spiritual and emotional, that you’ve helped bring a little goodness and light to your neighbors who need it most.

“It turned out to be a most humbling and yet most rewarding experience one can hope to have,” Stracci said of her Give A Christmas participation. “Spread the joy through your donations during this 60th anniversary of the 2017 GAC. We’re all part of a wonderful community helping one another.”