Our town has been lucky to have an Angel Tree Committee serving families in our area for many years. Those who started this project have earned the right to retire from this position and pass on the torch. A wonderful group of women have stepped up to make . . .
dreams come true in the Pontiac again this year.
For anyone asking themselves what is the Angel Tree, let me give a quick run down about this and how it works. The Angel Tree is aimed at helping families in need, families who are down on their luck, have lost jobs, have lost income due to illness or injury among other things.
We know that there are a lot of families who need an extra hand and we know we live in such a generous community where people are always looking to help their neighbours.
Having said that, this year the Angel Tree works by self-referral, or nomination. A friend, teacher, community member or anyone else can nominate a family needing some help this Christmas. The Angel Tree regional parameters have been expanded this year to include Angels located in Bristol, Bryson, Campbell’s Bay, Clarendon, Fort-Coulonge, Portage-Du-Fort and Shawville. The aim is to help as many families as possible to have a very merry Christmas.
How to nominate or self-refer? There is a Facebook page called Christmas Angel Tree Project where you can send any referrals or you can email angeltreeprojectshawville@gmail.com by Nov. 22. All referrals are kept confidential. When nominating a family please provide the family’s contact information (email/phone).
Once you nominate a family what happens? The family will be contacted by the committee and can choose whether or not they want to participate. If they agree to, they provide a list to the Angel Tree Committee of items their children have put on their wish list.
How can you help? They are accepting new (in packaging) gifts for children across the entire region listed above. There will be angels on trees at both Shawville Giant Tiger and Stedmans V & S, the front of the angel lists the gender of the child as well as their age while, on the back of the angels there are specific items that have been requested by families. They are hoping to stick to these requested items as much as possible but will be grateful for all donations. There is also a huge need for cash donations or gift cards so that the team can fulfill any requests that are not met with the gift donations.
How do we involve our kids? If you are fortunate enough to be able to put a bit of money away for this cause it will be a tradition your child won’t soon forget. We do our best to choose angels every year. My kids peruse the angels on the tree and usually choose a child the same age and gender as them. They use some of their own saved money and we top up the rest of the total. They go through the aisles and choose what they think their angel would love. They get so excited about knowing that this one action that we get excited about doing makes someone else so excited Christmas morning. It truly is a wonderful way to give back to the people in our community.
Our community thanks our long standing Angel Tree Angels a relief from their yearly efforts to make this such a success. We thank the new Angels that have stepped up to make a difference in our communities and wish that this year is just as or more successful than years previous. Working together I know we can make many smiles on Christmas morning.
