By Gabby Sahm

Staff Writer

With the holidays approaching, many are deciding to do something more productive with their down time. Instead of sitting around, drowning in food and family gifts, people are bearing the harsh temperatures just to bring one family a simple holiday meal or giving a toy to a less fortunate child.

Meals on Wheels and Toys for Tots are a couple of the many charities that dedicate their time during the holidays giving to those who might not have the money to buy gifts or afford a holiday meal.

Monica Reyes, Director of Volunteers at the Dallas VNA department, has been helping volunteers work everything out for the holidays.

“In addition to deliveries on Thanksgiving and Christmas Days, we also collect toiletry items for distribution to our clients with their Christmas Day meal delivery,” Reyes said.

Meals on Wheels also has programs that deliver meals to individuals at home who are unable to purchase or prepare their own meals. Since they are housebound, many of the recipients are the elderly, and many of the volunteers are also elderly but able-bodied and able to drive motor vehicles, used to deliver the food.

There are many opportunities for people to volunteer. If you wanted to volunteer to either supply food for the meals, help make the meals, help deceiver the meals or do all three you can visits their website or one of their many locations all across the country.

Toys for Tots is another charity that also helps families out but not with meals. It is a program run by the United States Marine Corps Reserve which distributes toys to children whose parents cannot afford to buy them gifts for Christmas. The United States Marine Corps Reserve works year around with fundraisers and donations to insure they can keep this program around. As the motto says “every child deserves a toy at Christmas.”

The mission of the program is to collect new, unwrapped toys during October, November and December each year, and distribute those toys as Christmas gifts to needy children in the community in which the campaign is conducted. If you would like to volunteer or donate toys, you can always visit their website, or go to one of their many stores all across the United States.

Union Gospel Mission also finds ways to help not just around the holidays, but everyday. UGM is a charitable organization that provides meals, education and shelter to anyone who needs it. They also have drug and alcohol recovery programs for those struggling with addictions.

Fort Worth resident Deanna Kriesman works at Alliant Techsystems Inc.(ATK) where they have turned their annual Christmas into something more meaningful. ATK has started to get involved in many charities, including Toys for Tots and Union Gospel. Later in the year they will help raise money to buy cups of coffee for soldiers over sea.

“We give mostly our time with these charities,” Kriesman said. “Sometimes we give money or we host collection drives to help raise money.”

Keller resident Chris McDonald has been giving to Toys for Tots for four years. He also works at ATK and could not think of a better way to contribute his time to the community.

“I like giving to kids who cannot afford toys,” McDonald said. “It helps them out if they are not buy them or are unable to see their family for the holidays.”

With all these charities, helping out around the holidays will be easy. This way everyone will be able to get into the holiday spirit.