Holiday Hearts
Every year we collaborate with The Haven, LISTEN and the congregation at the North Chapel Universalist Society to ensure that all of the children and families that are either staying at The Haven or have come on hard financial times receive gifts during Christmas time.
The reason why we started this project was not because we love presents – or because we bought into the materialist advertising of the holiday season.
It was because a Change the World Kid overheard a homeless little girl talking about how she’d been teased at school. Kids in her class were talking about what they’d received for holiday gifts, and one turned to the little girl and loudly said, “Oh, you don’t get gifts for Christmas, because you’re homeless, right?” It made the girl, and the homeless parents to whom she was talking, feel terrible.
We discussed this at our next Change the World Kids meeting and created the Holiday Hearts project to help homeless children and their parents to have special gifts to give to each other, and to be able to share on an equal basis in discussions with peers and co-workers about this aspect of the holidays.
So the ultimate goal of our project is not so much presents, as it is reducing divisions between people, supporting the development of healthy self-images, and reducing bullying.