Today’s guest post is written by Angela Foremaster, a freshman at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Earlier this year, Angela was named Nevada's top high school volunteer of 2012 by The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards for collecting small gifts to fill Christmas stockings for foster children and homeless teens in the greater Las Vegas area.

During the Christmas season, it seems like everyone is looking for ways to help others.  I wanted to do something special that would make a difference.  I established a project that donates Christmas stockings to children in foster care.  My starting goal was to donate 100 stockings to one organization; I ended up with 250 stockings that we donated to two organizations. And now my whole family has gotten involved and we have decided to take this on as our family Christmas project each year. Last year, we were able to donate over 300 stockings through the help of the community. This year we are hoping to donate 500.

There are five adopted children in my family, so foster children have always been important to me.  I’ve volunteered with organizations that serve foster children and had always noticed how stockings aren’t given out to the children at Christmas.  This made me sad. In my family, stockings are an essential tradition and something that I look forward to every year on Christmas morning. So, I decided that I wanted to find a way to donate stockings to as many foster children as possible in order to give them more of the Christmas experience that they would not otherwise have.  

 In my first year, my original goal was to donate 100 stockings to the Clark County Foster and Adoptive Parent Association (CCFAPA) because the only presents many of the children in this organization receive are just the ones from their annual Christmas party. I made a list of what I would like to include in each stocking and then a specialty list of items by age. Then, I recruited some people from my community to help me with this whole process. We ended up donating 175 stockings to the CCFAPA and 75 to HELP for Homeless Teens.

My favorite part of the entire experience is when I actually hand out the stockings to the children. The light on all of these teens and children’s faces is unbelievable. For some of the children, this was the first stocking they had ever received.  

It’s also great to be able to share this experience with my family and for us to make this a special Christmas tradition for our family.  We are able to impact so many people – including the children and teens who receive the stockings and the people who donate their time and items to fill the stockings. We have already started to collect things for Christmas next year.

If you want to get involved in spreading holiday cheer this is a great project for one person to do by themselves, or with their family and friends. Contact your local charity, homeless shelter, or foster organization and ask if you could donate one stocking to a needy child. Giving even one child that extra Christmas joy is what the Christmas season is all about.