Teamwork!

The Humanitarian Service Project and Head Start of DuPage County are teaming up! HSP has been fortunate to have received an excess of toys for children ages 3-5, and instead of storing them, we’ve decided to give them to children who could use them. Head Start is a national program that helps prepare children of low-income families for school.

With the help of Joy Aaronson, the Lead Family & Community Specialist for Head Start, we will be providing Head Start with enough gifts so that 583 children between the ages of 3 and 5 will receive gifts. Joy will work with the various DuPage County Head Start Programs to coordinate the delivery of the toys. We have enough extra toys so that 271 boys and 312 girls will each receive 3 gifts.

With so many toys to sort, we knew we would need some extra help, so Megan Birkey, our Children’s Birthday Project Coordinator, contacted our friends at LexisNexis. LexisNexis sends employees over to help throughout the year, so Megan figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask, and it didn’t! They were happy to help, and we kicked off our toy sorting today with the help of one of their employees, Karen Enright! Karen, along with the help of Jan Thompson, our Toy Room Manager, Kristin Schnell and Shelly Hodges, two of our regular volunteers, and Eunnice Deiparine, an intern from COD, started the process of pulling toys out of bags and boxes to sort into groups of three, based on age and gender. Many thanks to Karen and LexisNexis, Jan, Kristin, Shelly, and Eunnice for stepping up to the job!


~A life not lived for others is not a life.~ -Mother Teresa