With the holiday season fast approaching, the Gloucester Giving Elves are planning our holiday-giving event for the students at the Gloucester High School ESL department. This will be our third year supporting this population at the high school.

For the past two years, we have assembled gift bags with specific items, all donated by the generous members of our community. This year, we decided to do a shopping night for the students where they can choose one gift from each category. This will allow the student to feel empowered and take pride in choosing something they can keep for themselves or gift to someone else in need.

If chosen to receive the Awesome Gloucester Grant, we could buy what we need for the students that will fill in the gaps of what is not donated by the community.

Our venue will be Gloucester High School’s beautiful annual event, inviting these students and their families for a lovely meal and entertainment. Representatives from many organizations also attend, including Open Door which gives each family fresh fruit and vegetables to take home. The Gloucester Health Department will be in attendance providing valuable information regarding available resources for the students.

With all this being said, this grant would enable us to create an even better event and significantly impact this population of teens who don’t often receive gifts during the holiday season.

Our mission started out with 60 students the first year to 80 last year and then right before we finished off the holiday season we were able to help an additional twenty students last year .
The need seems to grow year after year and we intend to rise to the challenge .