Stated in the first line in the About Us section of the Family Giving Tree website is the jarring statistic: “The Bay Area ranks as one of the world’s most affluent areas, yet more than 800,000 Bay Area residents live at or below the poverty line, and one out of every five children here lives in poverty.”
To help address this, the school has again partnered with the Family Giving Tree during the holiday season to support the organization’s purpose, dedicated to aiding financially struggling families. Participating in the organization’s Holiday Wish Drive, the school requests tags — which contain recipient details and their gift preferences. These tags are then placed on a Christmas tree in the main office for students and staff to pick from and grant the requested gifts, between $25 and $50, for families in need.
Typically, SHS works with the Saratoga Union School District and shares between 25 to 75 tags with schools such as Redwood Middle, Argonaut, Foothill and Saratoga Elementary School.
Last year, the school was only able to receive 100 tags due to issues with processing the tags. However, this year, the school got 500 tags, which allowed more students and staff members to help. According to activities director and assistant principal Kristen Cunningham, some participants even took multiple tags or hosted fundraisers on platforms such as Facebook to purchase more gifts.
Cunningham also noted that the increase in the number of tags may also raise concerns about being unable to satisfy all of them. She said, however, that the Family Giving Tree organization also accepts donations online that will go toward the unfulfilled gifts. The goal is to be sure that everyone who requested a gift will receive one.
The Holiday Wish Drive begins in October when the organization reaches out to schools through email asking whether they would like to participate in the drive for the holiday season.
When the tags arrive, leadership students then set up a tree and hang up all the tags prompting the start of the Holiday Wish Drive. The event is then quickly advertised through multiple platforms such as the Friday newsletter, posters, social media and Parent Square. Additionally, according to Cunningham, emails are sent to all the staff members since many of them enjoy contributing.
Finally, on Dec. 5, Cunningham and assistant principal Abra Evanoff collected all the 420 gifts and brought them to the Family Giving Tree warehouse to be distributed.
“It’s important for us as a community who have been given so much to give back to those in our community who are in need — who may otherwise not receive a gift that they wish for during the holiday season — and to know that the joy that they’re going to experience [will] be so impactful in their life,” Cunningham said.
