Family-to-Family

Share Your Bounty

FamtoFamily

Launched early last year, our Sponsor A Veteran program has reaped some immediate and heartwarming benefits for the sponsored vets.

In addition to providing each vet with more than a week’s worth of groceries every month, many veterans have received birthday gifts, shoes, shirts and pants, personal hygiene products, books and more from their sponsors.

Our contact at Westhab Inc.’s veterans housing facility in Yonkers, New York wrote about one sponsor’s gift: “I just delivered the sweatshirt to Edward S. HE LOVED IT. It was the perfect size and warmth for the weather.  It’s like they knew what he liked, AND it was red for the Boston Red Sox! He sends his thanks and appreciation to his sponsor. He is wearing it now. 🙂”

When we heard that one of the vets we sponsor had no mattress in her apartment, we reached out to our donor community and were able to provide her with a mattress and new bedding. Last summer two disabled vets, one in a wheelchair, were badly in need of air conditioners, which we were able to provide through the generosity of our donors. Several vets have needed work clothes for job interviews…. another need we were able to meet, providing gift cards so they could go shopping.

Donors have also sent designated funds for our “Veterans Adopt the House” program, so we’ve been able to provide a hot take-out meal for every monthly house meeting at the Westhab facility since we launched!

To date, 42 veterans in the suburban New York area have been sponsored. These are vets living at or below the federal poverty line, who were recommended by one of three veterans services organizations: Family Services of Westchester in White Plains, N.Y.; Mental Health America of Dutchess County in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; and Westhab Inc. in Yonkers, N.Y.

Learn more about how to sponsor a struggling veteran here.

In an expansion of our regular Sponsor A Family program, Family-to-Family has linked up 90 refugee families who are recent arrivals to the U.S. with monthly sponsors.  The program, launched in 2017, is an effort to help refugee families that are already in the U.S. but can’t yet support themselves. Each sponsored family is provided with a monthly grocery gift card enabling them to purchase basic grocery staples at a grocery store in their neighborhood. Recommended to our program by several national refugee resettlement agencies located in the New York City and upstate New York area, these families – fleeing violence, war and persecution –  have emigrated from more than 20 countries – including Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Chad, China, Cuba, El Salvador, Eritrea, Guatemala, Guinea, Honduras, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Libya, Mexico, Peru, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Somalia, and Ukraine. Sponsors provide a monthly donation to Family-to-Family which allow us to purchase the grocery gift cards, and can also send “their” family other basic essentials through the mail. Our goal is to help these individuals and families, who have already endured so much, feel welcome and secure in their new country. Learn more here.

Visa employees in San Francisco came together in late August and assembled an impressive 88 Family-to-Family Birthdays in a Box (in this case bags) for 88 children in need. The boxes, each filled with everything needed for one child to have a birthday party (cake, icing, decorations, a gift, etc.), were delivered to the poverty outreach organization Hamilton Families, also in San Francisco, where they’ll be given to low income children in their transitional housing and shelter programs.

As we did during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Family-to-Family launched a Sponsor A Family program for victims of Hurricane Harvey, Irma and Maria. We linked with several on-the-ground organizations that help families in need; in Houston: The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston, Communities in Schools, and Firestarter; in Florida: The Boys & Girls Club of Collier County and Jesus Loves You Outreach Ministries; and in Puerto Rico: the Jewish Community Center of Puerto Rico.  These organizations continue to refer families that lost basic household items in the hurricanes to our program, and we’re linking those families with donor families. Donors are shopping and sending “their” Harvey or Irma family many of the items they lost in the flooding… things like bedding, towels, kitchen items and more. Donors are donating funds so household items can be purchased locally for Hurricane Maria victims.  Click here to read a article about our hurricane sponsorship program in the Westchester County Business Journal. Or click here to learn more about joining as a sponsor.

When our Orlando community partner Pauline Jackson asked for help with her annual school supplies drive, we reached out to our donors. And you responded overwhelmingly! Pauline held her giveaway “Jamboree” on August 11th, and was able to provide filled backpacks to a record 627 local children in need. She was also able to give out 225 pairs of new shoes, and gave the first 160 families to arrive a basket of food as well. Pauline wrote: “The kids had a blast! We had bounce houses, free hot-dogs, pizza and drinks. Please tell everyone thank you so much for helping to make this back to school outreach the most successful one we have ever had.”

As part of a major community service effort in December and January, 190 employees from WebMD in several U.S. cities took part in F-to-F’s “Bath Pack” project, putting together an impressive 950 personal care item kits for struggling families in need. 120 employees in Indianapolis (Indiana) and another 70 in Portland (Oregon) assembled the kits, which each included shampoo, soap, toothpaste, a toothbrush, deodorant, a comb and a list of WebMD wellness tips. The hygiene products for the kits were donated by High Ridge Brands, MetLife Dental Division, Hillsboro Implants & Periodontics, WebMD Cares and SC Johnson.

Completed “bath packs” were delivered to local social service organizations.

In addition, WebMD employees volunteered at the Portland Rescue Mission to serve breakfast to over 150 homeless, where they distributed more of the personal care item kits.

Catherine Daniel, a Senior Manager of Public Relations for WebMD, explained that the project, “was an opportunity for WebMD to provide those in need with the everyday tools to maintain their hygiene, thus encouraging overall mental and physical health and wellness.”