Christmas for Kids
Christmas for Kids a long-standing tradition at the Rotary Club of Santa Clara, is a culmination of a year around effort starting at the beginning of a new year. As the new year starts, “buyers” (Rotarians and their spouses and friends) from the club seek out toy gifts and jackets for the following year’s event in December. Much of the club's efforts will be put in long before the gifts are even distributed in December. Countless hours will be spent raising money to help pay for this event. In fact, many hours are spent in the club’s main fundraising efforts leading up the August Soccer tournament where a good portion of the Christmas for Kids financing comes from, through The Santa Clara Rotary Foundation. This year of 2012 was no exceptions. The event itself, takes hours of buying, transporting, organizing, wrapping, arranging, coordinating, transporting again, setting up, cooking, decorating, cleaning and more. More importantly, however, it also takes the commitment of dedicated Rotarians, their spouses, Interactors, friends of the club, volunteers and others to make a dream the reality for some very special little citizens of Santa Clara. Over $10,000 and three-hundred to five-hundred man-hours are spent preparing for this one day, most anyone seeing it will say it was well worth it.
From our project Chair Bill Carver, Rotary Club of Santa Clara:
A big “thanks” to all for making our Christmas for Kids program this year a huge success. Without the contributions of the entire club, this event could not be pulled off. One hundred-fifty children will have a Christmas they will remember for a life time. The spirit of cooperation and assistance by Eastern Furniture and Lexus of Stevens Creek were amazing.
Although everyone helped in some way, certain people need specific recognition:
Linda Clark is the heart and sole of the program. Her organizational skills and commitment to the children of Santa Clara really make the program happen. She was aided in all aspects of the preparation and event by her husband Tom and he also did all of the computer/photo printing work behind the scenes.
Margaret Demorest did all the coordination with the schools to get the lists of the kids who were going to attend, and she arranged for all the assistance by the students from our local High Schools and Middle Schools. Sandi Allen provided the wonderful coaches to transport all the students involved. Our Superintendent, Bobbie Plough did a great job reading the names.
Our veteran Santa, Bob Buchser, did his usual wonderful job. He was aided by Jan Eric taking the photos and of course, Mike Moul, who arranged for Santa's chair. The driver of Santa's "sleigh", Joe Hart of Lexus, made the entrance memorable.
Dan Holder provided another wonderful meal and coordinated the whole food operation flawlessly. He was aided by Joe Sweeney at the restaurant. The wonderful coffee cake in the morning, it was made by Danny's brother, Mike Holder.
Collen Noll and Kelly Yaminishi organized all the jackets and toy bags so the process of giving each child the right items went off without a hitch. Another big thanks Lidia for the pizzas at the wrapping party. And, of course thanks to all the spouses, and other volunteers from the community that helped out, including Roxanne from Lexus.
A final thanks goes the wife of the Christmas for Kids Chair, Carleen Carver. This year, she purchased nearly all of the jackets by working with Walmart to get a discount and also arranged for a $1000 grant from Walmart so we could buy books for most of the children. She also assisted Linda in the purchase of nearly all the toys as well as working at the Wrapping Party and main event.