Children’s Policy Council hosts annual Christmas gift collection
Published 7:19 pm Tuesday, December 19, 2023
Members of the Lowndes County Children’s Policy Council collected and donated gifts to ensure local foster children receive Christmas gifts.
A sizable donation from Lowndes and Butler County Toys for Tots aids the Lowndes County Children’s Policy Council in their efforts to collect Christmas gifts for local children.
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The Lowndes County Children’s Policy Council met Dec. 6 for its December meeting, gathering together for Christmas celebration and the group’s annual Christmas gift collection.
District Judge Adrian Johnson said the gifts collected during the meeting will be distributed amongst foster families in Lowndes County.
“We currently have fourteen children in foster care in Lowndes County,” Johnson said. “Each one of our children made a Christmas wish list and I sent that list out.”
Johnson acknowledged that there are foster children in the county whose ages range from newborns to eighteen years old and said that paired with the efforts of council members, a sizable donation made by Lowndes and Butler County Toys for Tots director Michele Sousa will help those children experience some holiday magic this year.
“Michele with Toys for Tots was kind enough to take that list and donate a ton of items,” Johnson explained. “We take up these donations to make sure that all of our foster children have some gifts for Christmas.”
Sousa said that with an abundance of toys donated to the Toys for Tots program this year, it was her pleasure to aid the council in their efforts as she discussed the volume of children Toys for Tots provides gifts for each holiday season.
“Right now, we have between 3,600 and 4,800 children this year,” Sousa said. “It averages three to five children per family.”
In addition to the toys collected by members of the council and the donation from Toys for Tots, monetary donations were also accepted in lieu of gifts according to Johnson.
“We’ve also received some donations to our Children’s Policy Council from different folks like a monetary donation from our District Attorney Charlotte Tesmer,” Johnson said. “We had some donations from members of churches who were interested in donating whether it was gift cards or monetary donations. We’re going to use those to get some things that either weren’t on the lists or we didn’t have the opportunity to have them donated.”
