The deadline to register families who might need holiday assistance for their children is this week.
Parents or legal guardians have through Friday to sign up a child to receive gifts and other items by calling the Holiday Helpline at 812-375-2216.
Organized through the United Way of Bartholomew County, the Holiday Helpline maintains a database serving as a clearing house for several seasonal charities.
Charities include the Columbus Firemen’s Cheer Fund, Shop With a Cop, Toys For Tots, Lincoln-Central Neighborhood Family Center’s Angels of Love initiative, and the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree program.
The database ensures that nobody abuses the goodwill and generosity of local residents by seeking assistance from multiple charities, United Way Director of Special Projects Alicia Monroe said.
Although some charities do serve children who are signed up after the deadline, it is usually under certain circumstances, and there are no guarantees of acceptance after Friday, she said.
Meanwhile, the Columbus Firemen’s Cheer Fund announced they will not be sorting and boxing toys Friday at the former JC Penney store in FairOaks Mall. Boxing took place Monday, and is planned at 6 p.m. Wednesday because the charity is nearly done with sorting and boxing gifts for its list of families this year.
But this does not mean a lack of demand overall for help, Monroe said. The overall total number of requests for assistance is 2,661 as of Monday, which is nearly equivalent to the same time last year, she said.
While the number of Cheer Fund recipients may have dropped slightly, the number of kids receiving gifts through two other charitable organizations has gone up, Monroe said. She identified them as the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree program and the Lincoln-Central Neighborhood Family Center’s Angels of Love.
The reason involves established different age limits for each program. The Cheer Fund does not accept children over the age of 12, Columbus Fire Department spokesman Capt. Mike Wilson said.
The Salvation Army’s Angel Tree program serves children up to age 15. They will even extend that age limit to 16 and over if the recipient is disabled or has some special needs, said Capt. Amy Tompkins of the Columbus Salvation Army.
While the Salvation Army used to register their Angel Tree recipients themselves, this is the first year that the organization has joined the United Way’s shared data base, Monroe said.
Meanwhile, the Angels of Love program will provide assistance to teens up to 18 years old — just as long as they are still in school, said Diane Doup, community outreach coordinator with the Lincoln Central Neighborhood Family Center.
In a collaboration with St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, the Angels of Love program has identified a large number of businesses, individuals and corporations who step forward to serve the needs of children and families, Doup said.
Another reason why the Salvation Army is gaining popularity is that they no longer have a few rooms full of donated items, Tompkins said. With today’s Angel Tree program, children write down three gift choices — and a donor works to get the first selection on the list. But if that item either can’t be found or exceeds the $40 gift limit, the contributor simply goes to the next item on the list, Tompkins said.
While many Bartholomew County residents assume a child is assigned to a holiday charity, that is not the case, Monroe said.
Instead, the parents are given available options after they answer questions regarding such factors as age and income eligibility, she said.
“The choices they are given depend on the answers they supply to certain questions,” Monroe said, but United Way does not choose the organization for the family.
There is also a good reason why a number of holiday charities don’t serve children after they become teenagers, Tompkins said.
Those who are 13 or older often request expensive and sophisticated electronics such as laptop computers, iPads and iPhones that are beyond a charity’s financial resources, she said.
Many of those electronic items also require fees for being online, said Columbus firefighter and Cheer Fund Co-Chairman Ben Noblitt.
“It gets pretty pricey for a low-income family when a free gift requires a monthly payment plan,” he said.
For the Salvation Army, the best they can do to accommodate teens is to provide a gift card from businesses such as Disc Replay, which sells and trades pre-owned media items, Tompkins said.
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The deadline to sign-up a child to receive holiday assistance through most Bartholomew County seasonal charities is this Friday.
Families that meet income eligibility guidelines can register a child by calling the Holiday Helpline at 812-375-2216.
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