The 12th annual Angel Tree Project is underway and your support is needed to help make this holiday season merrier for hundreds of less fortunate children.
Laura Stone, President of DeKalb County Angel Tree Incorporated, says this program has been reorganized. “This is our 12th annual Angel Tree Project. It’s basically the same program but we’ve come under a different organizational aspect of it. We are now a non-profit organization in the process of getting our 501c3 status. I am the president and Lisa Vaughn is the secretary-treasurer. We have a board of directors made up of Marie Blair, LaVaughnda Midgett, Charlie Parker, and Tim Woodward. We’re working together with the community this year as a group in order to provide presents, like we always have, for the needy and disadvantaged children of the community.”
Stone says DeKalb County Angel Tree Incorporated hopes to serve more than 600 children this holiday season. ” We’ve got, somewhere in the neighborhood of 630 children this year that we’re serving, and the deadline to shop and return your gifts to the banks is on Friday, December 7th. I know a lot of people are going to be off during the holiday and it’s a good time, when you’re going into the bank to cash your check for after Thanksgiving shopping, to go ahead and pick up an angel or two off the tree. If you can’t choose an angel, we’re happy to take money as well. We understand that some people don’t have the time to shop so we’d be happy to do the shopping for you. This is a good weekend to get everybody in the shopping mood, and hopefully we’ll have a lot of these angels taken this week.”
Angel Trees are located at all bank locations in DeKalb County. Each angel represents a child and his or her wish list for Christmas. Select an angel from the tree, buy a gift for the child, and return the gift to the bank where you picked up the angel.
Stone says Cash Express is also serving as a donation site for anyone who wants to drop off coats and toys.” We’ll be making up presents from the donations. If we have a child who doesn’t get as much (Angel Tree presents) as their sibling, or if a child’s name doesn’t get taken and we have something left over, we’re going to have some options of being able to make up some presents with these donations, so if you just want to buy, a couple of Barbie dolls or a coat or two you can drop those off at Cash Express because they’ve partnered with us.”
Stone says she knows of one family who benefited from the Angel Tree Project in the past and this year is able to support it themselves. “They were able to take four angels off the tree this year. I talked with this lady and her child and she said if it wasn’t for the angel tree in year’s past, her kids wouldn’t have gotten anything. Her child said I was able to get presents when I was growing up and it’s time for us to give back to the community. I thought that was such a touching story of how things can turn around for people. Here is a family who needed help, when times were tough for them, and are now in a position to buy for four angels themselves. That’s a wonderful example.”
Archived News & Obituaries