Kiwanis Club of the Helderbergs Christmas Gifts

Kiwanis Club of the Helderbergs - Making Christmas merry for Hilltown seniors - Altamont Enterprise - December 16, 2010

The Kiwanis Club of the Helderbergs does numerous community service projects like this every year.

Making Christmas merry for Hilltown seniors

To the Editor:

Each year in October, the Kiwanis Club of the Helderbergs receives a list of needy seniors in our service area. The club mails a questionnaire to each senior with a self-addressed, stamped envelope, asking their needs and wants.

Club members then attempt to fill those needs through the Christmas Store, a program of the Hilltowns Community Resource Center that receives donations of gently used clothing, linens and household items.

This year, 31 seniors responded with requests, and club members decided to "adopt" each senior and provide a new gift, in addition to the used items. Requests were varied and pretty modest.

Most wanted clothing - warm jackets, sweatsuit sets, robes and PJs, boots. There were more unusual requests: one couple needed a new vacuum cleaner, as theirs had stopped working. Another reported a clothes dryer had died, and club members networked to find a used replacement, which was delivered and installed as an early Christmas present.

The meeting of Dec. 8 was at the resource center's "Christmas Store." Members took each senior's list and tried to find at least some of the items requested from the supplies on hand. At the end of the evening, there was a package of items for each person on the list. This week Kiwanians will help deliver some of them.

For more information on Kiwanis and its projects, please call me at 894-8589.

Zenie Gladieux

Kiwanis Club
of the Helderbergs

Altamont Enterprise - Thursday, December 16, 2010