CASA Christmas program a great success for 2006

Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Voluteers were busy during the holiday season wrapping presents for this area’s foster children. Our CASA “Santa Helpers” spend countless hours during our holiday time to make sure that our Foster Children will have a great Christmas.

This great program for our Foster Children was started by Richard Paolillo, Pat Elliott and Sherry Wendt over 5 years ago, and the Christmas gift program grows bigger and better every year. Over 150 children receive Christmas gifts that range from coats and new clothes to game boys, popular toys and bikes.

Every year CASA “sends a Christmas wish list to every foster child in Union and Towns County.” The children fill in their “wishes”, as well as their clothing and shoe sizes, and especially their “big wish.”

The CASA Christmas program for our foster children is made possible by the hard work

and generosity of 10-15 volunteers and incredible support of our neighbors of Towns and Union Counties, who provide hundreds of presents for the children. Many people in our community also provide CASA with monetary donations that help CASA purchase the “big wishes” on each child’s list. All of these sponsors are truly the “angels” in our community!!

2006 has been a great year for our Foster Children’s Christmas program. CASA volunteers would like to thank everyone in the community for supporting the Foster Children’s Christmas Fund.

Agreat appreciation goes out also to the hard working volunteers that gave so much time and effort to collect and distrubute all of the presents for the children. Thanks to Lorena Johnson, Sue and Gene Chumley, Pat and Bob Elliott, Pat McCamy, Richard and Mary Jane Paolillo, Polly Pitts, Gene and Sherry Wendt, Diana Smith and Lou Ann Bleakly.