Lt. Wendy Deuel, a corps officer with the Salvation Army, says she wishes everyone could see the faces of participants in the Adopt-A-Family program when they receive their gifts.
Adopt-A-Family provides toys, clothing and food to people in very low-income households at Christmas. Sometimes they’re so happy that they will hug the Salvation Army officers and even the volunteers who happen to be there that day, Deuel said.
“That expression is what I wait for every Christmas,” she said. “Some of them cry; some of them make us cry. Sometimes they don’t even know what to say; they just say ‘Thank you’ over and over and over again.”
The Salvation Army and the Commonwealth have partnered for Adopt-A-Family since 1980. This year’s list includes 275 families. Individuals, businesses and other organizations may adopt one or more families on the list for $70 each.
Starting today, qualifying families will be listed anonymously in the Commonwealth twice a week until all are adopted.
Donations may be taken to the Salvation Army office at 413 U.S. 82 West between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Those with questions may call Wendy Deuel at 897-5005.
The number of families is up from last year, when 196 appeared in the initial list. That was down from 285 at the beginning of the 2013 campaign and more than 400 in 2012.
Wendy Deuel’s husband, Lt. Benjamin Deuel, also a corps officer, said Adopt-A-Family started slowly this year, with only 106 signups in the first full week of October. But the pace picked up after that.
The Salvation Army publicized the effort in the Commonwealth and on television and also took fliers to schools. “We felt like we did all we could do to promote the assistance,” Benjamin Deuel said.
Families in emergency situations may still be added to the list. In fact, last year, the Salvation Army helped three families on the day the gifts were distributed.
“All the way up until distribution day, we’re doing as much as we can,” Deuel said.
And even after all the names are adopted, people still are encouraged to give.
The circumstances of the families vary widely. Sometimes people have lost jobs or had to care for sick relatives; other times a parent dies and grandparents must step in to care for the children.
Potential recipients must meet a long list of requirements to qualify for Adopt-A-Family. When they go to the Salvation Army office, someone will check their paperwork carefully before they can even sign in, and then they must go through interviews.
Some people “come to us and they want assistance and they don’t necessarily need it, or it doesn’t appear that they need it,” Deuel said.
However, he added, that happens much less than it did when he and his wife began working with the program in 2012.
The Salvation Army checks all of the applicants’ income and expenses carefully. If they find that a family has $100 per child left over after the bills are paid, they should be able to handle Christmas on their own with careful budgeting, he said.
“While we’re here, we want to emphasize the need to be responsible for their family. We want to empower people to provide for themselves,” he said. “We don’t want to enable people to continually seek assistance. If they have the means to help themselves, then we want to encourage them to do that.”
Not only does that set an example for the recipients, but it helps assure donors that their money will help those truly in need, he said.
If donors “wanted to throw their money out in the street, they’d go do it,” he said. “But they bring it to us because they trust us that where we put it is where it needs to be.”
The money helps pay for toys, clothing and food, but not every recipient receives all three. Some who already receive enough in food stamps won’t get food, for example. But the children all get toys, and clothing is given if it’s available.
Deuel said that even during the registration, people in Greenwood typically aren’t choosy and say their children will be happy with whatever they get. That’s not the case everywhere, he said.
“I’ve been in places where people have thrown stuff back at us because it’s not what they asked for,” he said. “And I haven’t run into anybody like that here.”
Often it’s humbling for the parents to ask for help, but they are encouraged to tell the children that the gifts came from them and not from the Salvation Army, he said.
The combination of the Adopt-A-Family and Angel Tree programs is the envy of many in the Salvation Army elsewhere, the Deuels said.
“I’ve grown up in the Salvation Army,” Deuel said. “This is the only place that I’ve ever been that we have these two dynamics — the dynamic of the Altrusa Club doing an Angel Tree and then the paper doing an Adopt-A-Family.”
Wendy Deuel added, “We talk to a lot of other officers from other territories or divisions — I’m talking about other states — and they don’t have anything like that. We talk to them about this program, they’re like, ‘That’s really nice. That’s really cool.’ And they get really excited, and they get jealous about it.”
• Contact David Monroe at 581-7236 or dmonroe@gwcommonwealth.com.
