Houston Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Adopting a Family ?'s
Have any of you ever participated in the Adopt a Family thing for the holiday season? If so, how much time did you have to do the shopping and about how much did you spend on the family? Did you drop off the gifts at their home or do they have a holiday party you take them to.
I'd love to participate this year but need to have a bit more info before I tell the hubbs about it.
Re: Adopting a Family ?'s
This is our first year doing it, so I may not be the best help. We plan on spending between $500-$700 for gifts and then we are making them a Christmas Eve Dinner. We havn't been been given the details of the family yet, so once we get the details we will start shopping. We should get those sometime in November.
We plan on dropping everything off to the family Christmas Eve, so the mother can choose what to do with them...from Santa, from her, etc.
Are you going through an agency? I'd ask them - they should know the typical financial and time commitment.
Dozens of nesties sort of adopted a family last year. Almond and BPaullo spent a LOT of time collecting gifts and cash donations delivered everything, so their time contribution was significant. But if you are doing all the shopping yourself I wouldn't imagine it'd be too terribly bad. Almost everything is probably available at Wal-Mart or Target.
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It depends on the organization. Many don't let you have any contact with the family, while others let you go right to their homes yourself. Just find a couple causes you believe in and check with the organizations.
If you need a jumping off point, check with Interfaith Ministries. We delivered gifts to the family we adopted via that organization a few years ago.
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If you know anyone at an HISD school, you might check with their "community in schools" coordinator. These are special social workers who have good relationships with some of the neediest families in the school. We sponsored a family at Reagan Highschool one Christmas. I basically talked to the CIS director and asked if she knew a good family whose kids were working hard at school and who could use some help. She put us in touch with just such a family. The grandmother, mother and 2 kids all lived together. The only item on the mother's wish list: slippers.
HOwever, most case workers know their families. If you go through any organization where the case worker is involved with the selection, you're going to get the results you want.
DePelchin Children's Center is a great route to go. We have made a tradition of each of my children sponsoring child that's the same age/sex as they are.
http://holidayproject.depelchin.org
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I love nesties. There are some great organizations out there for this,
Communities in Schools in HISD is wonderful. I know a few other school districts are doing this as well- Pasadena, La Porte come to mind. if you live or have family out there.
Depelchin is the one I'm currently working with.
If you live in Fort Bend- Shared Dreams is a fantastic organization. My companies local office is in SL so we have worked with them quite a bit- the last 10 years. I have personally met the founders and counselors as well as social workers who help these families. Last year one of our families (mom and 4 kids) the mom asked for a bike and umbrella so she could get to work quicker. The kids all needed staples like beds and shoes and food. Not one asked for anything for themselves.
You do not get to meet any of the families through these organizations unless CIS has changed their policy, but I can assure you that there is virtually no fraud happening with them either. The need is huge.
We do DePelchin. We pick a couple of kids from the list - the wish lists will be available on November 21.
We also pick up stuff throughout the year and put duplicate gifts in a closet that are delivered to De Pelchin, but not meant for a specific kid.
Last year the nesties adopted a family that was about to be homeless. They were days away from eviction and there electricity was about to be shut off. A new pair of shoes that FIT was a big deal. We did go a little crazy.... everyone was extremely generous.
We always do tons of stuff for DePelchin not assigned to a specific child. I pick up stuff on clearance, coupons, good deals all year and drop off a big box of all kinds of things. I breaks my heat to see the names that are passed over on the list as Christmas nears.
I hope to find a family this year just by keeping my eyes and ears open. There are people in need all around us especially in this economy.