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Kids Care Club: Membership Has Its RewardsHamilton-Wenham Chronicle, December 20, 2001
Each year, parents in Hamilton and Wenham sign up their children for a smattering of after-school activities. A dose of sports can be combined with a few hours of drama and, depending on one's schedule, maybe a musical instrument can be squeezed in.
Most parents have assumed lessons that fostered empathy, charity and generosity were only offered on Sunday mornings. For nearly five years, however, the Kids Care Club has been meeting, after hours, at the Cutler Elementary School, helping children and their families experience the joy of reaching out to others.
Each month, between 20-50 children meet to plan and carry out a different charitable project. Fleece jackets have been collected and shipped to Nepal. Lunch snacks and drinks have been donated to Acord Food Pantry. Hats have been decorated and delivered to children at the Dana-Faber Cancer Institute.
This month, in conjunction with a grant from Sears and the Points of Light Foundation, children in the Kids Care Club made holiday hope chests for children in the care of the state's Department of Social Services (DSS). The grant from Sears allowed each child to buy $15 worth of merchandise at Sears, for a child of a given age and gender.
After school, children decorated their gift-filled boxes, each of which will be given to a child either in foster care or under the DSS supervision. The holiday hope chests will supplement the one gift each of these children receives from the DSS.
"Many of these children move frequently from one placement to another, so the idea of a hope chest is that it is a fancy decorated box that they'll be able to keep their possessions in when they go from place to place," said Kids Care Club organizer Dolly McIlvaine.
"We were asked not to forget the teenage population, [youngsters who] often get overlooked," said McIlvaine, who noted some of the boxes will go to teenagers in DSS care.
Carla King, foster parent recruiter for the Salem office of the Department of Social Services, is thrilled the Kids Care Club thought of the children in social services.
"Most kids in foster care come with nothing, so the holiday hope chest gives them something to call their own as they move into that foster home," explained King. "A lot of times, all they have are the clothes on their back," she added.
Holiday hope chests will also go to children in need who are still living with their parents.
"For a child in need, this is going to provide an extra gift they can put under the tree," said King.
King's office serves more than 300 foster children and 700 children at home but in need, all in the Essex County region.
"I'm so happy that the kids thought of our kids. And it is very much appreciated." King assured.
Debbie Spaide, a mother of five in Connecticut, initiated the Kids Care Club. Spaide and her husband often planned community service projects for their children and their friends. She eventually formalized the events and created a club around them. In early 1996, Kathy Mullin, a Cutler school parent, suggested the idea might work at her child's school.
Caption: Second-graders Joy Santarelli, front, and Rachel Landis prepare holiday hope chests at the Kids Care Club. "Mullin felt very strongly that even young children could reach out and impact others in need beyond their own little circle," said McIlvaine. Less than a year later, the Cutler-based club welcomed its first members.
Each year, as word has spread, the Kids Care Club's numbers grow.
"Word is getting out about what we do," said McIlvaine.
Not all children partake in all projects; McIlvaine asks children to choose projects themselves. Parents are welcome and younger siblings are often included.
Each fall, club members rake leaves for local seniors.
"Seniors so enjoy seeing the little kids out there. And we always try to leave the yard looking better than we arrived," said McIlvaine. Other projects have included planting flowers at Patton Park, singing at nursing homes and sponsoring a coin drive for an elementary school located near the World Trade Center.
Many of the projects are coordinated with items collected from the Cutler student body at large, through the school's so-called "giving tree." A wooden "tree" with bins at its base for collecting items, it stands prominently in the Cutler school lobby. Each month, notices go out to students and their families, explaining the next collection. The tree has collected school supplies for HAWC, toiletries for homeless shelters and books for the North Shore Children's Hospital's "Reach Out and Read" program.
For one month, baby items were collected at the giving tree. Club members, with the help of an art teacher and a Spanish teacher, wrote notes and designed tote bags that were sent to new mothers in an impoverished area of New Mexico.
"That whole experience was just phenomenal," said McIlvaine. "The children learned about the poverty, where these young moms were coming home to cardboard shacks with absolutely no supplies for infants,"McIlvaine thinks the lessons learned in this after-school program are life lessons.
"Children in our community can be sheltered from the harsh realities of what is out there," said McIlvaine, who is also the school adjustment counselor. "That protection is okay, but I feel strongly that it's beneficial for the children to develop an understanding that there are people and children in totally different circumstances than themselves."
"And by a small act of kindness," she concluded, "they can truly have an impact on somebody else's life."