The Charlottesville UU’s have provided holiday gifts to Greer Elementary School families for several years, even before I arrived at Greer three years ago. Each year, our Greer Family Support Team gathered information on 8-10 of our neediest families. And each December, our team arrived at Cville UU with vans and pick-up trucks to load up the gifts with generosity that overflowed from those pews. Rev. Leia, RE Assistant Caroline Heins and the many church volunteers organized them so wonderfully for us and helped us carry them to the waiting convoy. They were wrapped and labeled to make delivery easy and festive and off we went.
And then this year, Covid-19 came. Our Greer Family Support team worried that many more of our students’ families were struggling. We spent the fall offering information about programs that could help with food, rent, utility payments, covid-19 testing, etc. We directed parents to unemployment. We explained how to apply for benefits for food. We fielded calls for so many needs. We had no idea what the holidays would look like this year for families struggling for the basics and families were focused on getting the basics, not so much about gifts. And we knew that those donors who helped us at the holidays might not be able to provide like they had in the past. We also wondered how we would deliver gifts and keep everyone safe from Covid-19.
So, after discussion with the Greer Family Support Team, I reluctantly asked Rev. Leia if we could change how UU provided holiday gifts. We asked Rev. Leia for gift cards instead. We could deliver those more easily, more safely, and with fewer people involved. Families would be able to use the gift cards for what was most needed. We had no idea if donors would want to help in this way. We knew that was a BIG ask. It certainly isn’t as exciting as picking out toys and dolls, bikes and clothes and wrapping them and delivering them, knowing that they would bring joy to children and their families. We didn’t know what to expect doing it this way.
So, on a mid-December morning, I knocked on the door of Cville UU. Alone. No convoy of vans and trucks. Just me. Rev. Leia responded to my knock on the door. We wore masks and we socially distanced. We couldn’t even greet one another with our annual hug! She gave me a small brown paper gift bag and a grocery bag of hats, gloves and scarves. No bikes to roll out to the waiting trucks, no presents to load into the vans. It felt odd!
And then Rev. Leia said…there are almost $5000 in gift cards in the bag! My heart skipped a few beats! My breathing quickened! Tears welled up in my eyes! I didn’t know what to say! I thanked Rev. Leia over and over and over! And then I drove back to Greer with tears rolling down my face and those cards sitting in the brown paper bag on the passenger seat beside me.
I went back to my office at Greer, where I have worked just a few hours since March. And I inventoried MORE THAN 125 cards valued at an average $35 to a wide variety of retailers! Those will provide for way more than 8-10 needy families and the impact will be so much greater! Parents will breathe a sigh of relief and know that their neighbors in Charlottesville care about them!
Thank you, Charlottesville UU for helping Greer families end 2020 and move on into 2021 with hope and joy!
Fran Clark
Family Support Worker @ Mary C. Greer Elementary School
Albemarle County Department of Social Services