By Erica Fischer-Kaslander
“I've got gadgets and gizmos aplenty
I've got whozits and whatzits galore
(You want thingamabobs?
I got twenty)”
“Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid may not be a classic holiday tune. Yet as I was walking around our office this morning trying to make sense of the mass volume of holiday gifts donated to fulfill each of our children’s individual holiday wishes, for some reason “I’ve got gadgets and gizmos” is what started running through my head.
By the end of this week, more than 500 Passaic County youth will have received holiday gifts, thanks to the generosity of Passaic County CASA’s donors. We’ve seen everything from Chromebooks to Barbies, Legos to bicycles, karaoke machines to baby dolls.
Every year, I think to myself, “We couldn’t possibly top this.” Then another year comes and I’m again amazed by the volume of support our community shows for children who have been so traumatized.
This is our first holiday season in our new 4,700 square foot office space. Instead of squashing everything on top of each other like in years past, we now have 6 dedicated wrapping stations, each Advocacy Supervisor has a dedicated area for gifts, and there is a special refreshment station for volunteers.
Many organizations provide holiday gifts for youth during this season. What makes our organization different is the reason that we conduct this holiday gift collection. We don’t just collect toys for the sake of giving toys for fun. We grant the specific wishes of each and every child in Passaic County’s foster care system. Just like you and I may fulfill our own child’s “Santa” list, we want our youth in foster care to experience a normal holiday season complete with a fulfilled wish list. Our holiday wish program is a component of our organizational value of normalcy. In short, “normalcy” is a term which means ensuring a youth who lives in an out-of-home living arrangement (foster care, residential treatment, group home, shelter, or similar) is able to live a life with experiences as close as possible to a child in a traditional family home environment. By fulfilling each child’s specific holiday wish, we are adding one more “typical” or “normal” experience to their childhood.
I need to share the immense amount of work that this effort takes. Over 100 volunteers have spent hundreds of hours organizing and wrapping each child’s wish list. In total, approximately 1,600 individual gifts were donated.
Holiday gifts, however, only give normalcy during the holiday season. What can give normalcy for life is a safe and permanent home, which our advocates work each and every day to help our children achieve. If you would like to join them in this effort in 2020, please join us at one of our upcoming information sessions to learn more or make a donation to support the training of a new volunteer advocate to ensure a child reaches normalcy for life.