Gift Cards Go a Long Way to Helping Families

One of the Eagle/Garden City Rotary Club’s favorite projects over the years has been holding a Christmas party for some Pierce Park Elementary school children from low-income families. Typically, they come by bus to the River Club where we meet on Thursday, have a buffet lunch with us, meet Santa, receive their gifts, and then pet a reindeer before getting back on the bus and returning to school. It's not only a special event for the grinning K-3 students, but a real highlight for club members as well. 

 

Of course, with COVID-19, this year had to be different. Members discussed options and decided to give $25 Fred Meyer gift cards to Pierce Park Elementary School instead. They collect these gift cards and issue them to families in need so that they can purchase groceries, toiletries, household supplies and perhaps even holiday gifts. Seventeen members contributed just short of $1,500, allowing us to provide 47 cards.

 

About this time, District 5400 offered its special simplified grant. We applied for and received a $1,000 grant to put toward 50 more gift cards, bring our total to nearly 100 cards to help families.

 

To date, we have distributed 60 gift cards to Pierce Park Elementary and 24 gift cards to Eagle Hills Elementary. And now, though the holidays are over, the challenges that many families face are not. So we have 13 more cards that we plan to give to Pierce Park next month.

 

We wish we could see the same grins that we see on children's faces at our Christmas party, but we are confident that these gift cards are indeed lifting spirits for many families in our area.