With donations in, Operation Santa collections for families needing a little help during the holiday season are wrapping up.
“It takes a village,” said Rindge Women’s Club Vice President Marilyn Griska, who has organized the club’s Operation Santa for eight years.
From the club’s members serving as wrappers and the donors who buy the gifts, all the way to the organizations that play host to the program’s trees and donation boxes, Griska said there are many moving pieces to making it work.
“I could not do it alone,” she said.
The same is true of Grand Monadnock Rotary Club’s Operation Santa, according to its president, Greg Robidoux. This year was its 35th year running the program.
“It’s a fairly well-oiled machine its for the most part,” he said.
The Rotary’s distribution is now complete, with 220 children receiving gifts and clothing. From gathering donations to distributing them to families through local schools and agencies, Robidoux said everything went according to plan.
“Overall, it went really well,” he said.
Griska said participation in Operation Santa was lower this year than in previous years, with about 50 children and 19 families being served. She attributed the drop to large families aging out of the program.
All children served by the Rindge Women’s Club program receive three articles of clothing and three toys, as well as books donated by Franklin Pierce University. Families also receive grocery store gift cards for food.
“Everybody gets what they want,” Griska said. “Every single child got every single thing they wanted.”
In order to make that happen this year, both programs relied on online shopping in addition to more-traditional methods.
“It makes life a lot easier,” Robidoux said.
Even with that added luxury, last-minute shuffling of some kind is always a necessity, according to Griska – whether it be an attempt to make the distribution of gifts even in a single family, or a forgotten gift that has to be purchased.
“People are so generous, almost too generous,” she said. Sometimes donors will buy multiples of the same gift item, or many extra gifts for one child.
“They’re too good, but how can you say that?” Griska said. “It’s a wonderful program. It’s huge, it’s huge, and I stand here looking at all the bags and I can hardly walk in my dining room.”
Already, the organizations are looking toward next year, as Griska is contemplating excess gifts and Robidoux considers how to get the word out earlier.
“We start the process in the beginning of October, when most people don’t start thinking about Christmas until Thanksgiving,” he said.
Either way, the Rotary is accepting monetary donations toward next year’s Operation Santa.
“We can definitely use it next year,” Robidoux said.