 |
Hope for the Holidays |
|
Community Thanksgiving Dinner:
For the last six years, Fair Haven Concerned has teamed up with the Fair Haven Eagles and the Auxiliary to host a dinner for everyone in the community. The first year the Eagles prepared the meal and only a small group attended. So the second year we gathered all kinds of community groups together to promote and expand the meal. Castleton and Fair Haven Legion, the Fair Haven Graded School, Rotary, all of the churches in Fair Haven, and many businesses and individuals worked together to serve or deliver nearly 300 meals. While the number of meals goes up and down the spirit is wonderful. We encourage everyone to get together, and many of the clergy serve as hosts to welcome and visit with folks. Families, individuals, elders, children, youth, all get together for a community meal.
Christmas:
Toys for Joy:
The Knights of Columbus of Our Lady of Seven Dolors Church in Fair Haven have collected new and good used toys within our community for at least 20 years. They repair the older ones and just before Christmas invite folks who need a gift for their child(ren) to come and pick one. These gifts are supplemented by gifts from the Giving Tree.
Christmas Giving Tree:
years, community members have been cutting up...Cutting up the artwork from Christmas cards to make tags for the next year's giving tree. The Fair Haven Shaws has been our host. Just about Thanksgiving we set up a tree in Shaws Lobby with tags giving the age and sex of a child or adult and their particular need. Anyone who wants to make someone else's Christmas bright takes a tag, purchases the gift and attaches the tag so we know what it is. Many givers also wrap their gift.
The staff at the Fair Haven branch of Chittenden Trust gather the gifts each day and wrap any ones needing some covering. Then we bring them to Toys for Joy or to a family in need of a boost.
In the last few years several families have invited their children to contribute half or more of their Christmas gift money to purchase gifts for others. These children have picked out the best gift they would like to receive and given it to someone else. It has created a wonderful joy in their families and in the homes where a very special gift is received!
WSYB Christmas Fund Referrals:
Rutland Radio Station WSYB has headed up a Christmas fund for the Rutland Region for many years. People from the entire region contribute so that folks with no money for Christmas may go shopping with a gift certificate. Fair Haven Concerned gathers the names and other essential information to nominate families in our area for gifts from the fund. Many families find help and joy this way.
Adopt-A-Family:
Each Department at the Rutland Regional Medical Center gathers food and gifts for a handful of families in the Rutland Region. The hospital provides a bounty of presents for several families in our area.
Christmas Food Baskets:
Every holiday families worry. How will we heat our house, clothe our children and eat? Knowing that they will have a bountiful Christmas dinner with food leftover, gives hope and joy and peace to more than 400 people in about 150 families in Fair Haven, West Haven, and Benson. To provide the baskets we solicit several thousand dollars of support from individual and business contributions, the Community Thanksgiving Service, and matching gifts from community members and Stewart's Shops in Fair Haven. Stewart's matches dollar for dollar the gifts brought to their store each year! Then a team of people shop for the best buys, assemble boxes, send out notices, and for shut in neighbors delivers the packages of nutritious joy!
Food: Food Shelf: Every weekday morning from 9:30 to 10:30 the Fair Haven Food Shelf at St. Mary's School opens its doors to help our hungry neighbors. Maybe it's the loss of a job , a sudden illness, or just not enough income to make ends meet, but when there is no food and no money, we reach out a helping hand. For many years Camilla Partch headed our food shelf and now Amy Pregger is our leader. A different person operates the shelf one morning a week.
|
|