Salvation Army's Angel Tree program

With Christmas approaching, if anyone wants to do some charity work, I'd like to recommend the Salvation Army's Angel Tree program. If you don't know, parents of little poor kids write down the kids' shoe size, coat size and other clothing sizes, and one need and one wish. These are then printed on cards that are placed on Christmas trees around the city, and strangers get to buy them toys and/or clothes. I did two three month volunteer projects for them (got to meet the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders; they're really pretty in person).
After all the toys have been purchased, the families come in to receive their gifts. I was interested in seeing if they would be 'career welfarists' or just poor folks down on their luck (you could totally tell). I'd say 95% were just plain poor, and anyway even if they were career welfarists, you were getting toys for the kids who wouldn't have much of a Christmas without them.
One of the things we hadn't told them, and they weren't expecting, was a gift certificate for $10 worth of food. You couldn't buy booze, lottery tickets or tobacco. Just $10 worth of food, and that made a lot of people cry. $10 worth of fucking food at Christmas. You know those kids didn't get to eat every day.
We weren't supposed to adopt Angels ourselves, but every one of us broke that rule. I adopted two little boys, who both had the same need: blankets. They also had the same want: blankets. We hooked them up. At my location, we had mainly single black females and Mexicans. You saw some interesting names. One of the best was Ifeanichukwu, no clue what nationality that dude is. There were also two brothers named Einstein and Spanky. The best however, was some little black kid named Asswad. You'd think the nurses would have told the mother.
Anyway, sorry for the long post, but if you want to do some volunteer work this Christmas, I can heartily recommend the Angel Tree program.
Dave

Outstanding story dervis. I know what you mean, we had one lady send us a thank you card for helping her kids three years prior. She said she would have thanked us sooner, but stamps had been hard to come by. From what I saw, I don't think she was lying. If you do go down, put a pack of tissues in your pocket, for when you have to go outside for a few minutes.
The one lady that got to me the most was approved at the last minute, so we hadn't had time to get her kids' info and print the card. Those folks came in after the regular ones. In the back of the warehouse, we had what we called the toy store, where we had donated clothes, a crate of board games, a crate of dolls and other stuff. If a family had several kids and one got more than the other, we'd pad the bag of the kid that got less. For the folks approved at the last minute, we pulled stuff ourselves from the toy store.
This lady was a very young, maybe 22 or so very together looking single black female with like a 7-year old little girl. I was the computer guy and gave her the form to fill out her kids' clothing sizes and the wish and need. As she was doing so, she just started crying. I looked at her and could tell why she was crying. It was because she couldn't believe she was standing in front of a total stranger filling out a form so he could get her little girl clothes.
I looked her in the eye and said, "I'll take this one myself", and went to the back. Now the Salvation Army would only let you give each kid $25-$35 worth of stuff, but by that time I knew who my good elves were, and when they saw me come to the back, would stop what they were doing and come get the info. One was a good looking middle aged lady and the other was a cowboy, with a big belt buckle and boots. I don't even know their names. It's one of the best jobs you'll ever have; everyone helps everyone and is in a great mood.
We filled up four shopping carts with stuff; each bag took two guys to lift. We're hustling out to the lady and I tell her she needs to run. I got a hug that didn't end at the appropriate time.
dervis is dead right, you get a much better Christmas present than some shoes and a toy truck. Buddy, I don't think you can say you're not a nice person straight up.