Each year for the past four years we at Balanced Life Skills have had the honor to assist the foster children in Anne Arundel County. We have done that by providing a space for gift wrapping and our students have shown up in force to wrap the gifts, completing the job in about an hour. That is really impressive when you think that we wrapped about 3-400 gifts in one hour.
This year though things have changed. The group that sponsored this project will not be doing so this year. On hearing about this Balanced Life Skills has linked up with Indian Creek School to provide a Christmas for the 160 or so foster children in the county. Indian Creek is going to provide all the toys for the younger children and Balanced Life Skills is working on providing some gift cards for the 13 – 20 year olds.
Along with that both group of students will meet at BLS studio to wrap the gifts and deliver them to DHS offices on December 8th and on December 12 we have arranged for a party for the foster children and families at the Boys and Girls Club right here in Annapolis.
Here is what we need help on though. We need help with providing the Gift Cards. It has been suggested that gift cards to movies, restaurants, and department / clothing stores would be the best for the teens. If you would like to help us please call as soon as possible. We have 110 teens to take of this year, and without your help they may go without a real Christmas. You may either choose a name to provide for or just provide some gift cards and we will match them up to a child.
We would like to see if anyone could help approach stores to see if they would provide any of these. Otherwise Key School is selling gift cards this year and we could help them out and the foster children too. Thank you for considering doing this act of kindness for these children.
December 8th we will be doing the gift wrapping at the studio with our 9-12 year old students. Prior to December 12th when we are having the party we need to deliver gift cards to the case workers for the 110 teens who are in the foster care system in our county. I am hoping that all of us can pull together and provide a Christmas for these children too.
Mr. Joe and students,
Thank you for putting together this very special event and thank you for letting the Indian Creek School be your community partner!