First of all, THANK YOU to everyone of you who made Christmas for our kids possible this year. We celebrated big with over 2,500 children in our villages alone, not including all our home visits.
Jacque, our home lead, specialized each Christmas celebration to the homes request. For our baby house that looked like hundreds of diapers and formula gifted all the way to our girls home where they requested Samy and Pati’s tamales, Christmas cookie decorating, Christmas caroling, a photo booth and games, a piñata and more. Ending the night with a big game of hide and seek in the dark.
For our villages, we split the celebrations into 3 days. Each day seeing almost 1,000 children. The Monday prior to their event day, our crew headed to the school with paper bags to invite the kids to their big Posada (Christmas party). We handed out white paper bags as their “ticket” in that was to be decorated with their teachers prior to their arrival.
Inviting the children was more than we could have imagined. We added 2 new schools to our programs this year, many of which only eat a meal or two a week (for most that is the meal Marked provides through our school lunch program) let alone do anything for Christmas, and so seeing their faces and their responses to the invite will forever mark us. From mouths completely dropped to the floor, to tears, to kids laughing in hysterics because they were so thrilled, it was a moment we will never forget.
Moments like these are made possible by you! And for that we are forever grateful.
Next week: Christmas Part 2.
