THANK YOU TO OUR C.O.D. SERVICE LEARNERS

Kailey, one of our College of DuPage Service Learning volunteers, hard at work.

            Over the past several months, Humanitarian Service Project has been blessed to have many students from College of DuPage volunteer their time with us through the “Service Learning” program, in which HSP is an official service learning site. The Service Learning Program combines community service with academic instruction. Through this program, students have a requirement to volunteer 20 hours of their time helping local non-profit organizations. In service learning courses, students are involved in organized service projects that address the needs of community organizations. We have had many students stay over their 20 hours and we are very thankful to them for taking extra time out of their busy schedules to help us.  This method of instruction is a “win-win” because the students are able to develop their academic skills while they learn a sense of civic responsibility and help us make a difference in our community as well.

            These students have significantly contributed to our success the past several months and have helped us with many of our projects here including community outreach for our Christmas Offering, supervising volunteer groups, organizing donated food and toys in our warehouse, and helping with many other projects as needed.  

            We would like to take the time to thank these volunteers for helping us make a difference in the community.

Rolling up their Sleeves

Resurrection Lutheran

At HSP we are blessed to have quality volunteers who are friendly, enthusiastic, and focus on the excellence of the service they give. This week, three groups who have a volunteering relationship with HSP, devoted time to help us prepare for our up-coming holiday projects. Yesterday, a group from Resurrection Lutheran Middle School sorted bread for families enrolled in the Christmas Offering.  This group was the second group from Resurrection Lutheran that has come in the last two weeks.  The items sorted this week was, a mixture of white and wheat breads, bagels, hamburger and hot dog bun, and Cinnamon swirl Bread.

           

Lexis Nexis

     Also yesterday, Lexis Nexis of Lombard brought six wholehearted volunteers that put together bags of non- perishable food for our seniors and helped organize our pantry shelves.  Lexis Nexis helps throughout the year.  Most recently in late September, they came to help wrap gifts for the Children’s Birthday Project. We were happy to see familiar faces as a number of volunteers yesterday, volunteered in September and in previous events. They help often; especially during busy times, giving a hand to enable us to best serve the needy families and seniors in our projects.

Willowbrook High School

            Today, a spirited group form Willowbrook High School helped make the bread packages for the families in the Christmas Offering.  Peggy, A teacher at Willowbrook High, mentioned this is the fifth year that her class has helped here at HSP; and, it brings the best out of her students.  Peggy’s students learn how do take instruction, to persevere, problem solving skills, and time management skills as a part of their transitional curriculum. These students from Willowbrook High School are aware of what goes on in the community and being active with HSP is a positive way to influence the place they call home.  “It does not take much to help,” Peggy adds, “You don’t have to have ‘Everything’ in the world to give.”   Indeed the students at Willowbrook High School have embraced being active in the community which we appreciate here at HSP.

            Again, we want to thank all of our volunteers for the quality service they give here at HSP. We also want to recognize all of our volunteers that help this time of the year.  Moreover, if you want to help please check out our web site http://humanitarianservice.org/ or give us a call at 630-221-8340.

THANK YOU BARNES AND NOBLE!!

HSP volunteer Jeff Marker with the donated books.

Humanitarian Service Project is very grateful for the 1,766 books we received from Barnes and Noble of Oak Brook yesterday. These books were donated through Barnes and Noble’s annual Holiday Book Drive.  Barnes and Noble have been supporting HSP through this drive since 2009.  Barnes and Noble offers books that can be purchased by their customers at a reduced price to be donated to needy children.  These books will go to the needy children that HSP serves in our Children Birthday Project.  HSP supports 900 children a year through CBP, ages 3-11, with 6 to 10 new toys, 6 new books, school supplies, numerous smaller “filler gifts,” and party supplies (cake mix, streamers, party hats, plates, etc.), to provide them with a memorable birthday.  The families in this project lack the financial ability to be able to otherwise purchase these much needed books that are important to the educational growth of these children in this stage of life.

We again want to thank Barnes and Noble and their customers for this amazing donation.  In this time of year it is great to see so many people in the spirit of giving.  If you too are looking for a way to give this season contact HSP 630-221-8340 or hsp@humanitarianservice.org

You can visit our website at www.humanitarianservice.org for more information.

Making Room for the Cheerful Giving

     Visitors to HSP may notice an addition to our facility, and wonder why or how it got there.  Each year at Christmas time, the capacity needed for our Christmas Offering, and other projects, exceeds the storage capacity of our center.  Yesterday, National Van Lines kindly delivered a trailer to HSP to alleviate that problem.  The trailer was delivered by Michael Graham, a National Van Lines driver from California, who happened to be in town. The trailer will be parked next to our dock until after Christmas, where it will serve as temporary storage for the gifts given to the needy children served by our Christmas Offering. We are grateful to have the trailer measuring an additional 2500 cubic feet in storage capacity; and it has been given to HSP free of cost over the holiday season. We thank Maureen Beal President of National Van Lines for helping provide a convenient solution to our limited space in the holiday season. 

            The space added by the trailer is used to house our gifts for the Christmas Offering. The Christmas Offering provides gifts to children in the area for the holidays.  In the Christmas Offering, each child receives at least three gifts; and, with large amounts of committed donors, we maximize our outreach to local youths.  The trailer that has been provided gives us the ability to harbor more gifts to serve more families, and help add cheer to more homes this holiday season.

HSP IS BRINGING CHRISTMAS CHEER

Christmas is just around the corner and along with that comes Humanitarian Service Project’s (HSP) Giving Tree.  Every day we receive numerous phone calls from needy families hoping to have their children added to our waiting list. To keep up with this need, Giving Tree gifts is one way you can help HSP provide a joyous and cheerful Christmas. HSP has already committed to providing 1,200 children with gifts and hopes to be able to give to many more. Each child in the giving tree receives 3 gifts.

If you are interested in providing gifts through the giving tree, all you have to do is let us know the number of children you would like and we will provide you with the age and gender of the child and a wish list with the suggested items for the child.  HSP asks that each gift be in value of $25. You can choose to purchase the entire list, or just one item.  Once you have purchased the gifts, we ask that you drop them off wrapped to our center located at 465 Randy Rd., Carol Stream, IL by December 7.

Help us to make a child smile this holiday season.

Contact the Humanitarian Service Project: hsp@humanitarianservice.org.

HSP’s website: www.humanitarianservice.org

630-221-8340

A Week to be Thankful For

Pella Windows and Doors Donates 936 Boxes of Pasta

            We have had some awesome donations in the last week here at HSP.  Therefore, we are excited to highlight the contributions we have gotten over the last three days. Today, Pella Windows and Doors in a team effort produced 936 boxes of pasta equating to over 1000 pounds of food. We had a few young contributors as well. Kindercare in Carol Stream brought in about 200 items yesterday from a food drive they held; in addition to their food drive, the kids also toured our facility to see how their hard work will help us serve the needy.  Girl Scout troop 1197 from West Chicago also toured the facility and brought in three boxes and three bags of food.  Two common organizations that enhance the community are schools and churches.  On Monday, Anne M. Jeans Elementary School in Willowbrook, contributed to HSP by donating 15 bags of food.  We also received a generous donation from the Church of Christ in Naperville on Monday; they gave a van full of food to help HSP serve the community. We want to thank Dean Senne and Larry Erven for picking up the drives this week from their locations.  

Anne M Jeans Elementary and
Church of Christ Donated a Loaded Van.

            In the spirit of the Thanksgiving Holiday, we want to extend our appreciation to the organizations that have donated thus far; and we cannot wait to report the positive contributions of the future.  We want to wish our supporters a Happy Thanksgiving, and ask, “What are you thankful for this year?”

Girl Scout Troop 1197 Donates 3 Boxes and 3 Bags

Kindercare Gave 200 Items

Just a reminder our offices will be closed for Thanksgiving, and will remain closed until Monday November 26.

HSP Thanks Good Shepherd and Resurrection Lutheran

Students from Good Shepherd Methodist School help with
Senior Citizen Project. 

            We at The Humanitarian Service Project want to thank two local youth groups, Good Shepherd Methodist School in Bartlett and Resurrection Lutheran School in Aurora, for their time and effort this week.  Monday, twelve student-volunteers at Good Shepherd and their chaperons sorted food and made meat packages for seniors. Furthermore, today we had the pleasure of hosting an additional twelve energetic student-volunteers from Resurrection Lutheran, who sorted non-perishable foods.  The youth groups from both organizations were appreciative of the opportunity and of their volunteer time spent cheerfully and productive. Together the student-volunteers helped HSP organize their pantry in preparation for the holiday season. 

Students from Resurrection Lutheran School help sort food.

            Volunteers and the support of the community are the driving force of our projects. Without their time it would not be possible to sort and distribute the food and gifts to each individual senior or family.  Each project is enhanced by the attitudes and energy of each.  During the holiday season, the workload increases here at HSP with the Christmas Offering, being added to the Senior Citizen and Children’s Birthday Projects; nevertheless, the continuous support from all of our volunteers makes a huge difference in providing excellence services to our seniors and families. We extend thanks to our wonderful volunteers at HSP.

Local Charity Give Area Seniors Happy Birthday

Holy smokes! Once again, one of HSP’s supporters have just blown us out of the water with their support! The DuPage County chapter of Birthday Cakes 4 Free donated a record-breaking 17 cakes this month (which cost in excess of $200,) all of which were delivered to HSP seniors with November birthdays. All this love and support is thanks to chapter founder Rose Garcia and her supporters, who are dedicated to assisting needy seniors, celebrate their birthday. Rose generously took the time to bring in the 17 cakes this past Friday. Thank you to everyone who donated and took the time to make our seniors’ birthday’s special!

he DuPage County chapter of Birthday Cakes 4 Free has been partnering with HSP since Feburary 2012, and in that time they have donated 99 cakes in total! Wow! The DuPage chapter is committed to providing cakes to all of the seniors in HSP’s Senior Citizen Project.

Birthday Cakes 4 Free is a nationwide organization dedicated to providing birthday cakes to low-income people at no cost.  Their mission “is to help celebrate their special day and let them know they matter in hopes that this one act of kindness will last a lifetime.”  From everyone at HSP, THANK YOU BIRTHDAY CAKES 4 FREE!

Our latest delivery was this past Saturday, and we would like to thank everyone who made it happen, in particular the group from United Stationers who took the time to sort all of the seniors’ produce. In addition, we would like to thank all of our volunteer loaders and drivers, who took the time out of a beautiful weekend to help the needy, as well as everyone else who made the November D-Day run smoothly.  Whether they helped by sorting or donating groceries, or supported SCP in some other way, their efforts have enabled us to provide life-altering deliveries to the seniors we serve.

Thank You Girl Scouts of America

            Many wonderful organizations lend a hand around HSP, allowing us to serve the needy seniors and families in our programs. One such organization that has really made their presence felt this week is the Girl Scouts of America. HSP has been blessed to have, not one, but three gung-ho troops of girl scouts giving their time and energy to helping us serve the needy in our community. Monday troop 50724, a middle school group from Woodridge, donated 15 boxes of food on their visit and stayed to help sort food in the warehouse.  Troops 54 and 23 came from Lowell Elementary in Wheaton on Tuesday; where, they toured HSP and offered eight bags of food yielded from a drive put on by their elementary school. Today, a troop 51873 from Downers Grove donated 310 batteries; moreover, they volunteered to prepare items for the Senior Citizens Project and the Christmas Offering.    

            The local troops that volunteered this week are actively investing time in the community year around whether through food drives or local clean-ups of outside areas.  Many of the girls have been in the same troop since kindergarten and have developed a mentality of helping others.  One troop member said, “If I wasn’t a girl scout I would not have been given the same chances to donate and get involved in the community.”  The opportunity that Girls Scouts provide creates a passion to make a difference in the community with their peers.  Another troop member highlighted what it meant to help people her age in the Christmas Offering, “What we do means a lot, I hate seeing people without. I want to help them. This is a way that we can help the people around us have a better Christmas.”  Attitudes like this continue to garner like-minded people to help make Christmas better in many homes.

            We want to thank these local troops for extending their time and donations to the Humanitarian Service Project; and, we encourage all of our supporters to extend some portion of their lives to helping a neighbor.  

Thank You Barnes & Noble

Today, HSP received our first donation of new books for the Christmas season from the Barnes & Noble Book Store in Naperville. HSP is one of the three chosen charities who will receive new books donated by Barnes & Noble customers throughout the holiday season. They have supported HSP in some fashion for at least the last 13 years.  Over that time, they have donated thousands of books for local youths; therefore, promoting active young readers throughout the community.  The new books include many popular authors and favorite titles; such as, stories by Dr. Seuss and Beverly Cleary; as well as, titles like Curious George.  These new books will help facilitate the importance of higher learning within local communities.

           

A few books from the first delivery provided by Barnes & Noble in 
Naperville.

            At HSP, These new books are used for needy children; furthermore, new books always hold prominence in the programs they serve. The programs that distribute new books to the community are; the Children Birthday Project, where the children receive 5 to 7 new books as apart of their birthday package; also, these same books are being included as gifts during the Christmas Offering as well.  Without these new donations, many needy area youths would be deprived of a fundamental piece of education.  Regular reading can provide confidence and inspiration for a person’s educational development regardless of age; meaning, it is imperative for the young and the impressionable to have the resources to empower their futures.

            We thank Barnes & Noble for providing a service that seeks to lend a helping hand in developing the thinkers and doers of the future, because education makes a community better.  Barnes & Noble understands this concept and its relationship to developing young readers. We also thank the individuals who donated new books to the service that Barnes & Noble provide, and encourage all of our supporters to do the same. Barnes & Noble has a daily goal of 40 new books, and they enjoy exceeding this goal.  The drive runs throughout the holiday season, and in the season of giving, what is better than a gift of hope, knowledge, and personal freedom.

HSP Salutes Arlington Roe & Co.

The wonderful women of Arlington Roe & Co.!

Today, HSP welcomed a volunteer group from Arlington Roe and Co! This group of five women generously donated their time and resources to help us prepare for Christmas.  Not only did they spend over two hours volunteering around the HSP center, but they also generously donated paper products, office supplies, and presents for the needy seniors and families we serve! We would like to thank this group for all of their hard work, and, in particular Angela Cale, who organized the event.

This group accomplished quite a bit in the two hours they were here; they organized and palletized donated paper products, and also helped us put together letters to be mailed to the needy families served by our Christmas Offering. In addition to this hard work, and their other donations, they graciously made a monetary donation that will be used for purchasing fresh groceries and gifts for the Christmas Offering and ensuring our families and seniors have a very Merry Christmas! 

HSP Welcomes a New Intern!

Today, the Humanitarian Service Project is excited to welcome a new member to our internship team, Kaaron Carter. Kaaron is currently wrapping up his senior year as a Business Administration major at Park University in Missouri, but, through the magic of online classes, he is here ready to serve. Kaaron joins us as a Public Relations intern, and will be assisting HSP with community outreach. Kaaron says he is very excited to get going here at HSP, and is looking forward to gaining new experiences. We in turn, are happy to have someone so enthusiastic about contributing to our projects joining us.

Kaaron comes to us with a heart and mind already primed to serve those in need. While in college he was heavily involved in a yearly volunteer event, appropriately called “The Big Event,” in which he and his football team went out and performed chores and odd jobs for senior citizens in need. He also has been a volunteer track coach for children ages 7-18 for many years now, on top of a myriad of other volunteer activities he has been active with. Kaaron says he has always felt called to serve those in need, because throughout his life he has benefited from numerous mentors willing to help him grow, whether it be in academics or athletics. When not occupied by school or volunteer work, Kaaron loves to run, play basketball, and is a huge football enthusiast. Please join us in welcoming Kaaron to HSP! 

Adios Rachel

We want to extend our best wishes to Rachel Wincenciak, a talented general intern here at HSP, who completed her internship with us on Friday to embark on the next section of her journey. As a volunteer since High school, Rachel will be deeply missed. Her uniquely vibrant personality, paired with her super friendly attitude brightened the atmosphere of the office.  Rachel acted as a liaison for Spanish speaking families; especially, in the higher traffic holiday season.  This helped the flow of communication immensely throughout the office and community.  Rachel also had a deep involvement directly and indirectly in all HSP projects during her tenure.  Her direct involvement with Feed the Kids, Senior Citizen Project, Children’s Birthday Project, and Christmas helped to continue the quality service that HSP provides. Rachel is a regular volunteer at our monthly senior delivery days, taking pictures, videos and greeting drivers.  Although her internship has ended, we look forward to catching up with her on future senior delivery days.  We wish her well at her new job and encourage her to continue to create innovative ideas in her future endeavors.

REMEMBERING OUR VETERANS

In honor of the veterans that have served our country, we would like to remind everyone that some of these veterans are in need of some extra support. The veterans of our armed forces sacrificed years of their lives, putting themselves in harms way, in order to protect the lives and freedoms that we all hold dear. We want to thank all members of the military, past and present, for the service they have given to our nation and the world at large.   

Unfortunately, statistics show that there are more than 12 million veteran senior citizens in critical levels of poverty and that 300,000 elderly veterans are food insecure. A number of the needy seniors served by our Senior Citizen Project are either veterans, or the spouses of veterans. One way to pay homage to these veterans is to provide a monetary or food donation which will help HSP continue to meet their needs. Or, if you are so moved, support the other worthwhile organizations that aid veterans in need, like the VFW.

Some of the food donated by St. Walter's Parish

Today, we have received generous donations from local organizations in the form of food drives, which will help HSP serve the veterans and other needy seniors in our Senior Citizen Project.  The first van to come in was from St. Walter’s Parish, which was filled to the top with food. Later to come in was the van that was filled with food from the food drive that Willowbrook High School ran.  We would like to extend our gratitude to Karen Campe of St. Walter’s Parish in Roselle, for organizing this church-wide drive, as well as Scott Grobstein, advisor of the Willowbrook High School’s Key Club, for their support and donations of these food items.  We would also like to thank Dean Senne, Mike Reich, and Tom Hogan for donating their time by picking up the food drive items.

If you would like to help us support the local needy senior citizens or in one of our other projects that support the community, check out our website for more information: http://humanitarianservice.org/

HSP IS THANKFUL FOR MCDONALD'S CORPORATION

HSP would like to extend our thanks to McDonald’s corporation and Tania Patton for their donations of 100 “party in a box” kits.   These wonderful kits contain all the necessary supplies to throw truly amazing birthday parties for 100 of the 900 needy children that are served by our Children’s Birthday Project each year.  McDonald’s has been a friend of HSP since 2001 and has previously made many other wonderful donations to the Children’s Birthday Project including donating new school supplies and toys. We would also like to thank Tom Hogan for being so generous and volunteering his time to go and pick up all of the boxes.

Each box contains items such as cake mix, frosting, streamers, candles, party hats, cups, and plates so that the children can have a birthday party that otherwise their family wouldn’t be able to afford.  If you would like to help us with one of our needs like McDonald’s Corporation has, take a look at our website http://humanitarianservice.org/ for more information.

Thank You, St. Petronille Middle School

The holiday season will soon be upon us and we here at HSP are enjoying all the help from our wonderful volunteers this year! This week two great groups from St. Petronille Parish Middle School came to help us sort food for our Christmas Offering. On Tuesday 17 students and chaperones came after school to sort out non-perishable food items for the needy families in our project. Today we also had another group of 14 students and chaperones come help sort food as well.

Students sorted food into different categories and made sure each box had the correct amount of non-perishables. Each box contains a few of the following items: pasta meals, soups, salad dressing and mixes, snacks, cereals, oatmeal, boxed potatoes, crackers, and main meals, such as, chunky soups, tuna, and more! St. Petronille Parish Middle School has been a great supporter of HSP, so much so that now volunteering with us has become a yearly tradition! At least once every year St. Petronille comes to help with wrapping gifts for children or they donate their time to help volunteer for our many Christmas events. Today we loved having their students come in and show how their volunteer work has helped those in need in our community.

We would like to thank the St. Petronille Parish Middle School students, chaperones, and Valerie Della Penna for organizing this event today with the students! Food donations, like the donations that were sorted today, will be used to provide 150 needy families with more than three weeks worth of healthy groceries, this holiday season! If you or your group are interested in hosting a food or toy drive, food drive, or volunteering with us please call us at 630-221-8340 or email us at hsp@humanitarianservice.org. Every donation counts towards helping needy families and seniors in DuPage and Kane counties!

GIVING THANKS TO JOINT COMMISSION

Today, we were excited to have the Joint Commission out of Oakbrook join us at HSP. They brought in 28 boxes of food for our needy seniors served by our project. This amazing group brought in 6 volunteers who took the time out of their schedules to help us sort food, create packages of frozen meat, for the upcoming Christmas Offering.   Joint Commission has been an ongoing supporter of HSP’s efforts for six years.  In fact, a group of 14 from the Joint Commission volunteered early last month to kick off the food sorting for our Christmas Offering, so it seemed very appropriate to have these 6 from the Joint Commission coming in today, to help out as we enter the final stages of this food preparation.

Our Christmas Offering serves 150 needy families during the holidays with three weeks of groceries including:  six 25 pound boxes of non-perishables, 7 frozen meats, 4 loaves of bread and 15 varieties of fresh produce. In addition, all 900 needy children in our Children’s Birthday Project, as well as their siblings up to the age of 15, receive gifts through the offering (which will come to about 1200 children in total!) Since this program is such an important undertaking, HSP is thankful to have help from groups such as Joint Commission.

HSP Thanks G & M Die Casting

Humanitarian Service Project would like to extend our deepest thanks to our friends at G & M Die Casting in Wood Dale, for the donation of a whopping 480 boxes of facial tissues for the needy seniors in our Senior Citizen Project. The tissues were dropped off yesterday by Mark Hirsch from G & M, who also organized the donation. This generous giving has become a tradition for G & M, who have donated over 5000 boxes for the sake of the needy seniors in our project since 2007! We wish to thank Mark, and everyone at G & M Die Casting, for this fantastic donation.

The 121 needy seniors in our Senior Citizen Project lack the income necessary to provide themselves with the things they need to live healthy comfortable lives. When faced with necessary expenses like rent and medical costs, these seniors have trouble affording even the most basic necessities. For this reason, HSP provides paper products (toilet paper, paper towels and facial tissue) to the needy seniors as part of the 100 lb monthly, delivery of groceries they receive. Donations, like this one from G & M Die Casting, are what enable HSP to continue to provide these much needed items to the seniors. If you would like to help HSP reach these needy seniors with these goods, please call us at 630-221-8340 for more information.

Office Volunteers Needed!!

HSP’s busy season is here.  We are looking for volunteers to help out at our front desk with general administrative office duties. With our Christmas offering coming up, we have an increased amount of phone calls, visitors, etc. Volunteers will be asked to answer phones, greet donors, keep records of donations, and work with other volunteers and staff on several projects.  

Ideally, the volunteer will enjoy customer service roles and working in groups.  We ask that our volunteers have good communicative skills, know Microsoft Office programs, and are able to effectively multi-task.  Interested candidates need to be able to volunteer regularly.

The times we are looking for volunteers are morning and early afternoons.

Thursdays, and Fridays 9 am-3 pm.

Volunteers do not need to commit to the whole time frame, but we do hope that they will be able to volunteer regularly through November and December. Christmas season is our busiest season so we need all the help we can get!!