Salvation Army, CCS Work Together To Provide Christmas
Posted
David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
The Salvation Army and Combined Community Services work together to make sure they can assist the most amount of people without overlap, especially during the holiday season. Thursday afternoon, CCS Director of Client Assistance Peggi Lisenbee-Wright and Salvation Army Community Ministries Director Ken Locke discussed their Adopt A Family and Angel Tree Christmas programs respectively. “We have the largest programs in the county and we work together,” Lisenbee-Wright said. “If people are helping (others), we want them to contact us and let us know. We’re here 12 months a year, we don’t just pop up at Christmas time, and we try to stretch our dollars as far as they can go,” Locke said. Lisenbee-Wright said that it isn’t that they don’t want families to have a Christmas, it’s just that they want to make sure everyone can have one. “We try to do new families and families who haven’t been (in the program) since 2012,” she said about the Adopt A Family program. “We want to make sure people who have not accessed it, can.” Sign-up for families for Adopt A Family will be Nov. 5 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at CCS, with the Angel Tree sign-up at Salvation Army Nov. 5 through Nov. 26. People can begin adopting families through CCS starting at 9 a.m. Nov. 6 until all the families are adopted. To provide a Christmas for Kosciusko families through the Angel Tree program, people can find the tags on trees at local businesses. Lisenbee-Wright said that for the CCS program, applicants must have custody of children in their homes full time and be in Kosciusko County. If a grandparent has custody of a child, they should bring proof with them to sign up. They should not be getting assistance from any other program. “Adopt A Family is for families who won’t have Christmas without it,” she said. Locke said Angel Tree is a needs-based program and participants must also have full-time custody of the children and be in Kosciusko. Verification is required. Both programs generally have about the same number of families each year. In 2013, each had over 300 families seeking assistance for Christmas. “If anyone gets missed, Dave Morales and Toys For Tots gets them usually,” Locke said. Lisenbee-Wright said it’s not always the same families coming in for help. “We get different families, too.” Adopt A Family is a great opportunity for anyone from a couple to a family, business or organization to help a family who may not otherwise get to celebrate Christmas, she said. “Our (program) is more (that) we’ll deliver (the gifts), but about 90 percent of the people who adopt a family want to deliver the gifts to have a connection,” she also said. “We have Christmas because of Christ, which is why we do this.” Locke said, “We want to see people get helped who need help.” CCS Emergency Assistance Coordinator Lindsay Devereaux is taking part in Adopt A Family for the first time this year. She said, “I’m really excited to see all the families and how it all works out. I’m just excited to be a part of it.”
