Giving Tree

The Giving Tree Program is designed to maximize the community efforts to help out those individuals and families who may not have the resources to put some extra holiday spirit into the season. Indian Stream Health Center is once again teaming up with local Colebrook community member, Bonnie Day, to sponsor the Giving Tree Program. The donations that are collected from organizations and individuals within our local communities are redistributed to the individuals and families with our same local communities, ensuring that the giving spirit demonstrated is aiding our own community members.

 

This will be Bonnie’s 10th year of coordinating the Giving Tree program. She reaches out to school nursing staff and care management (all of whom are Indian Stream Health Center staff members) to identify families and individuals who may need some assistance for the holiday season. The nurses and care management staff work with the families and individuals to create lists of items that they need (winter boots, hats, pants, shirts, etc.) and a special extra interest (a hobby, a special wish, a specific toy, a book, etc.). Bonnie then compiles all of the information she receives and transposes it into the form of “Giving Trees”, which are beautiful poster board-sized displays that contain removable tags. These tags have all of the needs and wants from the lists. Staff members from participating organizations take the tags they would like to fulfill and bring the gifts back, wrapped, and with the tag on the outside of the gift. The tags are in specific shapes so that each of the families and individuals can be easily identified. The whole program is run on an anonymous basis, from both the giving and receiving ends.

 

Once all of the gifts have been returned to the organization, Bonnie collects and sorts all the gifts. She then distributes them back to the school nurses and care management staff for distribution to the recipients. All recipients cannot take part in other local charity drives, such as Toys for Tots. This allows the community to make a deeper impact for more of our needy families and individuals. For the 2016 holiday season, the Giving Tree Program donated gifts to 15 families and 10 individuals that live in our area, which ended up in compiling over 700 gifts that stayed in our communities.

 

Indian Stream Health Center and Bonnie Day would like to thank you for Grace Community Church’s consideration in donating to this program. It was a great success last year and we were all so thankful that multiple local organizations and staff graciously fulfilled the needs and wants of some of our local community members. We hope to continue our annual tradition with your assistance for the 2017 holiday season and beyond.

 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact either Bonnie (email is CC’d) or myself.

 

 

Jordan C. Phinney, MHA

Patient & Financial Services Director

Indian Stream Health Center

141 Corliss Lane, Colebrook NH 03576

P: 603-388-2448

F: 603-237-4467