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Christmas is a magical time of year. Santa and the Salvation
Army have enlisted a team of volunteers to make sure every
child in South Carolina has the opportunity to experience the
joy of the season.
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The Angel Tree program assists
families suffering from tough financial times by providing
new clothes and toys to put under their Christmas trees,
stockings to hang and a holiday dinner.
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I have three children. One is ten, a little boy his name is
Levi. I have a five year old little girl, Anna Lee and a
one year old name Adley. I knew that this year there was
no way that I would be able to provide Christmas for my
children had I not came and applied here.
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I'm a single mom of two small kids and my daughter is four. My
son is two. And it's really going to uplift this
Christmas. I'm aiming to be this, not perfect mother, but a
mother my kids needs to be nurtured and loved. After losing
my job I said there's definitely no holding back.
I need to go. I'm not ashamed. My kids, they are awesome
kids and I want them to be blessed with gifts, gifts that I
can't provide for them. More than twenty three hundred
South Carolina children will be impacted by the Angel Tree
program this year. When they wake up on Christmas morning
and they actually have toys and things that they asked for
and their parents to be able to provide that for them to have a
great Christmas meal that they might not have been
able to have as a family, that means a lot to me. And my family
means a lot to me so being able to give that to other families
is wonderful. The Salvation Army connects
anonymous donors like Mary Sesler to families who have
signed up for assistance. The name and the shoe size their
clothing size and whatever their favorite wish list toy is on
that list and so then we put them on our angel tree and then
we have various donors, various organizations,
companies and that they will go in and they will grab a
kid's card off of the tree and they will go and buy things for
them, it could be one, it could be two, it could be five things
whatever they feel their heart led them to do.
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The angels are not the only ones receiving a gift through
this program. Personally, I've been there.
And so when you been there and to help others
that has been in the same shoe that you been in to, it
just brings like a warm feeling of knowing that
that child could have been my child. That child could've been
my nephew or my nieces, but just to be able to
help to know that personally that I'm being a
blessing to somebody else.
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We can't do this without
volunteers. Volunteers is the key to making this work and
making it work smoothly. Volunteer start from the very
beginning to wrapping of the boxes for the toy drives
to stuffing stockings for the kids, to bagging the toys,
wrapping the toys taking the toys out to the car. It's a
chain reaction. It's very much similar to Santa's workshop.
I counted a blessing. We're able to partner with various people
to let them know you know our motto is doing the most good and
so we were able to allow other people to take part of that and
grab that as ownership as well that when you are helping
us to help people in this community,you are pledging to do
the same thing, to do the most good, to reach out to people and
to help them no matter what they look like, as our mission
statement is to meet human needs in His name without
discrimination. That's what we do, that's what we strive to do
and we allow anyone that want to come and be a part of that
to come.
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Many of the people that have come to volunteer
feel the same way that I do.
They want to give back. They want to see other people that
are in need to have a great Christmas and
for me it means a great deal because growing up, I grew up in
the projects and my mom was a single mom
and I was an Angel Tree kid and
that's what we received for Christmas. So to be able to do
this to fast foward and to be able to see this being done and
me be a part of it on the other end it means a great deal to me.
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Thank you. It is, is truly a blessing.
It's really and I'm trying not to cry.
This is actually helping my kids and helping me to
become a better woman, a better mother, a better
provider to the community as well.
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I would say thank you because without their help and
without their generosity there would be no way that a lot of
the children through this program would have Christmas
and be able to experience excitement and joy of waking up
with presents underneath the Christmas tree. 95 00:05:54,620 ♪