Presents Project

My husband and 15-year-old daughter had an unforgettable experience last December that impacted our entire family. They were giving a ride to another girl on our daughter’s basketball team when conversation turned to Christmas plans.
Almost immediately, the friend had tears streaming down her face. She shared that her single mom couldn’t afford to buy a Christmas tree, let alone gifts for her five and seven-year-old brothers. By the time they got home that night, my husband and daughter had hatched a great plan to ensure her family would have a tree with presents under it for Christmas.
Marcia Lavine, founder of Presents Project, was inspired 16 years ago to help families with similar worries. The mission of Presents Project is to provide holiday gifts to Healdsburg families in need. We do this by matching specific sponsors with specific families in need. Sponsors include Healdsburg families and individuals, businesses and their employees, social organizations or other groups.
Families with young children in need are identified by Alliance Medical Center, Fitch Mountain State Preschool, Healdsburg Boys & Girls Club, the Healdsburg Elementary Schools and Kids on Campus. To ensure anonymity, only the family members’ first names are disclosed to the sponsors.
The sponsors purchase gifts for each family member based on his or her age and gender, using a simple holiday wish list prepared by the family. Other sponsors who don’t have time to shop or are otherwise unable to provide gifts for a specific family contribute money to the project so the project coordinators can get gifts for unassigned families.
Just days before Christmas, sponsors drop off beautifully wrapped gifts at a select location in town. Within hours, there are wondrous piles of wrapped packages and shiny bicycles awaiting their new owners.
Later that day, excited families arrive to pick up their gifts. The atmosphere is joyful, the tears are frequent, and the evident generosity of the Healdsburg community is staggering. It is a delightful day for everybody involved. Wouldn’t you like to share in this joy?
If you’ve been a sponsor in previous years, we thank you and hope you will want to join us again this year. If you haven’t been a sponsor before, will you consider joining us this year? We served 92 families in 2014 and consistently have more families than available sponsors. If you’d like to bring joy to a family in need this year, please contact Beth DeCoss, 433-2721 or

bd*****@co*****.net











, or Debbi Crapeau, 431-1344 or

dc******@at*.net











.
Tracy Tucker is a Healdsburg resident