100 Area Families Getting Holiday Help on Saturday

On Saturday 100 families residing within the Copley-Fairlawn City Schools will be given enough food, toys and winter outerwear items to ensure a Merry Christmas, thanks to a massive donation drive undertaken by several community organizations.

Each year the Copley-Fairlawn Kiwanis Club takes the lead in collecting food, while the Copley Police Department heads up the toy drive and the Outreach Center at Copley United Methodist Church gathers donations of coats, hats and gloves.

When the three groups come together Saturday morning at Copley Community Center with their truckloads of donations and scores of volunteers to sort and organize items for distribution, the generosity of area residents will be on full display.

Kiwanian Ray Shelker, in his third year as chair of the club’s community service committee, said the holiday drive held for nearly 30 years represents a heartwarming coming-together of groups and individuals for a common purpose.

“We all work together as one big happy family,” Shelker said. “A project of this size is too much for one group to handle on its own.”

Every school within the Copley-Fairlawn district participates in the drive. Shelker said held its holiday food drive before Thanksgiving, resulting in the collection of more than 5,000 canned and boxed food items, as well as cash donations.

Those items have already been loaded into a semi-trailer in preparation for Friday morning, when Kiwanis members will travel to , and  and primary schools to pick up the donations being gathered at those buildings this week.

At the high school, Student Council is spearheading the food drive that had already netted 13 boxes of food items by the end of classes Wednesday. Teacher Roxanne Rynearson, who serves as council adviser, is hoping plenty more donations come in today and Friday.

Rynearson said incentives are in place at the school to spur donations, which are collected each day during first-period classes. The class that gathers the highest number of items wins a bagel or donut party. The school’s four students who bring in the most items will receive a donated gift card from either Laser Quest, , or Chick-fil-A.

Others who pitch in to make the event a success include Jim Parker of Parker Trucking in Copley, who has donated 100 bags each of apples, oranges, potatoes and onions. Shelker said the PTA at Fort Island Elementary raised funds to purchase 100 pies for the recipient families.

And the Kiwanis Club is using monetary donations combined with funds raised during the club’s annual Mother’s Day flower sale to buy 100 boneless half-hams, as well as 100 gift cards – likely to be $50 each – that the recipient families can use to buy perishable foods.

From 8 to 11 a.m. Saturday at Copley Community Center, the volunteer groups will be setting distribution stations that each recipient family will visit between 11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. that day to receive their items.

The families in need of holiday assistance were identified through the school district, area churches and social service organizations. Each applicant family was screened for eligibility and interviewed in order to determine their holiday needs.

Shelker said those in charge of toys and winter-wear items generally know before Saturday which families will receive which items, based on the ages of children in each family and their needs. Sorting and organizing the food donations, though, is a big, last-minute job.

“On Saturday morning we’ll be unloading the trailer … and sorting all the canned and boxed goods into types. We’ll set up multiple tables and, based on the number of members in each family, divide the items amongst the families. Larger families of seven or eight people will have larger baskets than families of two people,” Shelker explained.

Asked if there would be enough volunteers to get the food sorting done in just three hours prompted a chuckle from Shelker.

“There will probably be about 30 Kiwanians, a number of Key Club members from the high school, Builder Club members from the middle school and at least one Boy Scout troop. Oh, and some parents and students that just like to come and help with the community project,” he said.

When asked how recipients react to the distribution, Shelker said, “There are always a number of people in tears. They can’t believe that people are doing this for them. Sometimes you never know exactly what’s going on with a family, but you just hope they get back on their feet.”

Anyone interested in making a last-minute donation to the holiday drive can do so Saturday at Copley Community Center, 1278 Sunset Drive in Copley – but the earlier the better, so volunteers have time to get the right items to the right families.