Adopt-a-Child donors, volunteers help 130 families

Fort Scott resident Mary Brown (left) prepares to look through a bag of gifts, while Nina Arbogast and Shaytanna Reed help deliver them to her home during the Adopt-A-Child gift distribution Thursday at Community Christian Church. The program, which helps children from low-income families, is conducted by The Beacon and the Southeast Kansas Community Action Program (SEK-CAP). More than 300 children in 130 families were "adopted" this year by various organizations.

More than 300 area children in close to 130 families will receive the food and gifts they need this Christmas thanks to the Adopt-A-Child program conducted in a collaborative effort between The Beacon, The Elks Lodge and the Southeast Kansas Community Action Program (SEK-CAP).

Around 30 volunteers filed into the Community Christian Church gymnasium Thursday to help distribute gifts to families that signed up for the program, which helps children 14 years of age and younger from low-income families. Program chair Mark Denton said many of the families picked up their gifts within the first hour Thursday.

"I'd say about 70 percent of the packages were already picked up by noon," Denton said. "There was a big surge right at the start (11 a.m.)."

Any gifts that were not picked up at the church will be delivered to the adopted families, Denton said.

All the gifts were paid for by sponsoring groups that "adopted" a certain number of children. Denton said the largest sponsor was Fort Scott Community College, which adopted 60 children. Local schools, businesses, church groups, among several other organizations, sponsored the event this year.

"A lot of people help with this," Denton said. "It's just wonderful to live in a community that helps out this much."

The Beacon Director Bob Eckles said the program continues to impress him.

"It just gets better every year," Eckles said. "It's amazing that all 130 families could be totally adopted. Everyone in Fort Scott that needed help had help available to them."

Eckles added that the program almost had too many volunteers.

"We had people that wanted to help, but that need just wasn't there," Eckles said. "However, when there was a need, everyone seemed to come out in adequate numbers. We'd really be hard pressed to pull this off without them."

The numerous volunteers help make the program a continuous success, Denton said.

"We had around the same number (of adopted families) this year, but we had so many more people wanting to help," Denton said.

Some of the volunteers were elementary school-age children. Eckles said that children who help with the program can learn valuable life lessons.

"I think people like to do this with their children because it helps teach them to think of other people during Christmas," Eckles said.

The Adopt-A-Child program is in its second year under a new format. Last year, Eckles and SEK-CAP officials designed the new, more cost-efficient holiday assistance program to save both agencies time and money when helping needy children and families during the holidays, Eckles said in a previous interview.

In the agency's old toy store program, children and families would line up early in the morning to pick up donated toys, and those who didn't receive a chance to pick up items would take home leftover items, Eckles said.