November 8, 2007

SCHOOL SCENEin Almaden Valley

Holiday gift program brightens holidays for teens

By Jeanne C. Carbone
Staff Writer

From 2006, a display shows the Gifts for Teens girls’ totes ready for distribution to needy teenagers.

With Christmas less than two months away, the elves are getting busy, and Almaden’s Jeannemarie Gibson is one of them.

She is among a group called Holiday Gifts for Teens, an organization that collects and assembles holiday gifts for teens--an often forgotten segment of the low-income population.

“My mom belonged to a women’s club that did charitable things,” said Gibson from her home in Almaden, where she has lived since 1996. “My grandmother collected clothes for the poor. I was in the Junior Red Cross. Being charitable was normal in my family.”

Gibson is busy knitting caps for Gifts for Teens. That’s when she’s not shopping for makeup, manicure kits, scarves and lipstick to fill the girl’s backpacks. She says picking female items is easier but others in the group are shopping for the boys. The goal this year is to create 1,300 gift bags, filling 650 girls’ tote bags and 550 nylon/canvas boys’ duffle bags.

Almaden’s Jeanniemarie Gibson with the knitted caps she’s creating and the makeup and manicure sets she’s purchased for Holiday Gifts for Teens. Photo by Jeanne C. Carbone

Besides the approximately 300 individuals and businesses that donate items, local schools help as well. Leland High School and Bellarmine College Preparatory are holding sock drives. Almaden Country School is collecting stuffed animals while Presentation is collecting cosmetics and Notre Dame is soliciting fast food cards. Los Altos’ St. Simons toys and Leigh High School, Bret Harte and John Muir middle schools also are collecting donations. The gifts will be assembled Dec. 10 through Dec 15 and distributed through Sacred Heart Community Service, Bill Wilson Center and EHC LifeBuilders.

Gifts for Teens requires only new items, because these teens are used to getting things secondhand. Gifts for Teens will accept logo T-shirts, jackets, sports bras, ball caps, Frisbees, pens and the like from companies. Gibson is hoping that with the change in the San Jose Sharks graphic, the hockey team management will donate their previous printed items.

Many businesses like Cisco offer matching gift programs if employees donate. Cash is gold for the American Association of University Women [AAUW]-San Jose branch, which is the sponsoring organization. Cash allows the group to purchase items in quantity at wholesale prices. Grants have been received from the Rotary Club of San Jose, Xilinx Corporation, the Almaden Valley Women’s Club and Lancome USA.

Since 1997, AAUW and community volunteers has created Holiday Gifts for Teens for this segment of the population living below the poverty line, which is often forgotten. Most groups collect toys and gifts for younger children and adults and leave teenagers out. AAUW saw a need and filled it under director Elaine Benoit.

“Gifts for Teens, the gift bag project benefiting low-income teenagers, is in its 10th year,” said Benoit. “Throughout this time, the dynamic women on the steering committee have given of their time, enthusiasm and volunteer labor to make this project such a rousing success. Gifts for Teens wouldn’t happen without their efforts. These women model generosity of spirit in helping others in the community.”

A boys’ sports bag has everything to make Christmas special for a guy. Photos courtesy of Gifts for Teens

Gibson first heard of Gifts for Teens through Sacred Heart, where she volunteered creating layette sets for newborns and hygiene kits for the homeless. AAUW asked her to make a presentation about her ingenious ideas through Sacred Heart’s Neighbors Helping Neighbors program. To date, she’s collected donations, assembled and distributed 935 hygiene kits to the homeless and approximately 2,500 “going home from the hospital” kits for newborns.

“When I heard what they did I had to be part of the group,” said Gibson. “Last Christmas I helped package the backpacks. I’m in charge of publicity, but we’re all collecting and shopping for items. Gifts for Teens is a wonderful project.”

Time is short for the Holiday Gifts for Teens. They need donations of sports items, gift certificates, jewelry, calculators, grooming products, clothing, radios, backpacks and the like to fill their goal of 1,300 backpacks to brighten Christmas for needy teenagers.

To donate teen-appropriate gifts or volunteer for Gifts for Teens, contact project coordinator Elaine Benoit at ebenoit@pacbell.net or call (408) 268-9654.

Bellarmine fashion show hits the town Nov. 30

Bellarmine College Preparatory has announced that its 53rd Annual Mothers' Guild Fashion Show for Financial Aid will take place on Nov. 30 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. With the theme "The Boys are Back in Town,” the event will feature an afternoon luncheon followed by an evening black-tie dinner dance.

“This year’s fashion show theme, ‘The Boys are Back in Town,’ is centered on who and what we love most of all, our boys,” said Debbie Rossetto, 2007 fashion show chair. “For the past 53 years, Bellarmine moms have joined together to form a very unique and special bond that reaches across all boundaries to deliver one of Silicon Valley’s most anticipated fund-raising events while achieving our goal of making a Bellarmine education a reality for young men who may not have this opportunity.”

“For 156 years, Bellarmine has maintained the tradition of educating adolescents while developing them to be men for others,’” said Fr. Paul G. Sheridan, S.J., Bellarmine’s president. “Through their efforts with this long-standing annual fashion show, the Bellarmine mothers are role models for their sons, exemplifying what it means to be women for others.”

All proceeds from the fashion show will be used to provide direct financial aid for qualified Bellarmine students and benefit the school’s Financial Aid Endowment. Nearly 20 percent of the student body will receive financial aid this year. Since inception of the first fashion show in 1954, the Mothers’ Guild has donated more than $3 million to Bellarmine’s financial aid program. During the past three years combined this sellout fashion show has contributed more than $700,000.

“The Bellarmine community is diverse,” said Mark Pierotti, Bellarmine’s principal. “Through the money raised at this annual event, highly qualified students, who otherwise would not be able to attend, will benefit from a Catholic education in the Jesuit tradition.”

Men’s, women’s and teen’s fashions will be presented in the two shows at the Fairmont Hotel San Jose. Luncheon show guests are predominately women while the black-tie dinner dance attracts couples. Fashions selected for this year’s show will be modeled by professionally trained and choreographed Bellarmine seniors, faculty and mothers as well as by senior girls from Bay Area high schools.

“The Boys are Back in Town” will feature clothing designs from Santana Row and Westfield Shoppingtown Valley Fair: Eli Thomas, Macy’s, Jessica McClintock and Club Monaco. Photography will be provided by Al Bacosa of Bacosa Photography, hair styling by Dustin David Salon and make-up by Urban Decay.

For more information about the event, including donation prize drawings and purchasing lunch or dinner tickets, visit the Bellarmine Mothers’ Guild Web site at http://activities.bcp.org/mothers_guild or call the Bellarmine Mothers’ Guild at (408) 294-9224, ext. 209.

About Bellarmine College Preparatory
Bellarmine College Preparatory has been educating young men since 1851, when it was originally founded on the campus of Santa Clara University. The school has been located on West Hedding in San Jose’s College Park district for more than 80 years. Bellarmine students are educated in the Jesuit tradition of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, and are encouraged to become “men for others.”

Presentation students host holiday drives

Each year, Presentation’s Community Involvement Club hosts a series of holiday drives to support Sacred Heart Community Services. The food, toys and money the students collect support Sacred Heart at least four months past Christmas.

In fact, Presentation is Sacred Heart’s largest private supporter and each Thanksgiving Food Box they hand out is made up of at least 20 percent Presentation donations alone. Last year, students brought in about $45,000 worth of food, including 550 turkeys, as well as about $40,000 in cash donations and 2,200 toys worth $20,000. This year, the students hope to take in even more.

The girls will hold a food drive from Nov. 5-21. Each day, over 200 working poor and homeless families are fed with the food provided by Sacred Heart. While Sacred Heart Community Services provides food for families, they do not have a kitchen that serves whole cooked meals to clients.

Instead, community members come and pick up food that they take home to prepare for themselves and their families. The Presentation Food Drive focus this year is on pop-top cans (NOT including condensed soup pop-tops). Most people would never think about it, but many families Sacred Heart serves do not have access to kitchens and therefore are in desperate need for food they can easily open. The school plans to host a baby formula push day on Wednesday, Nov. 14 and Thanksgiving turkey push day on Monday, Nov. 19.

Presentation’s annual penny drive will be held Nov. 26–30 and will provide funds directly to Sacred Heart so they can make any last minute purchases for the holidays not covered by donations. It’s a great way to empty those change jars.

The school will also hold a toy drive from Dec. 3-7, collecting new toys because we like to stress the importance of quality donations for Sacred Heart’s clients.

Parents at Sacred Heart are actually able to shop for the toys for their kids with the Christmas toy box and it is one of the few times these families actually get to exercise some autonomy in what they receive. It’s a great way to empower them with dignity they deserve. Each year, teen-appropriate gifts, i.e. gift certificates, bikes, etc., are requested--items you would like to see your own child receive. Last year about 80 new bikes were collected, and are not just used by children, but parents who can use them as transportation to get to work.

On any given day, there are over 7,000 homeless individuals in Santa Clara County alone and the community is encouraged to support the group’s efforts. Contact Maggie Meyer, mmeyer@pres-net.com, with questions.

Boy and Cub Scouts will collect food

The annual Scouting for Food Drive is under way and once again there is a great need for food. Over the past few years the number of people needing help with the basic essentials of life, food, continues to increase and sadly the majority of these people are children.

On Saturday, Nov. 17, thousands of Scouts from first grade Tiger Cubs to teenage Scouts and volunteers will be going house to house to collect food for families who are less fortunate.

Residents are being asked to donate canned and nonperishable food that will be delivered by the Scouts to the Second Harvest Food Banks and other food banks supplying food to over 200 agencies. Door hangers, donated by Clorox, will be delivered to households the prior week.

Bay Area Food Banks distributed 90.3 million pounds of food to adults and children in need last year through 1,560 food pantries, children’s programs, shelters, soup kitchens, residential programs and other emergency food providers. Each month, Bay Area Food Banks serve more than half a million people, 48 percent of whom are children.

The Scouting for Food Good Turn evolved in 1988 as an effort to combat hunger and malnutrition in the United States. Through this project the BSA directly helps meet the needs of the hungry, while exposing its members, particularly youth, to the highest ideals of the Scouting movement through practical and dramatic experiences in the principle of the daily Good Turn.

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