2012 Dresden Elementary and CHRIS Kids Christmas Projects

This year marks the sixth year the St. Pius X community will be working to make Christmas brighter for several Dresden Elementary School Families and we are also happy to have added an new, additional complementary project for CHRIS Kids.   St. Pius has a partnership with our neighbors at Dresden, which is a K-5th grade Dekalb county public elementary school located on Dresden Road and this specific project is coordinated through the SPX Mothers' Club.  These children are from low income families and are not in a position to provide much of a Christmas celebration for their children. 

CHRIS Kids was founded in 1981 with the mission to heal children, strengthen families and build community.  CHRIS is an acronym that represents their core values:  Creativity, Honor, Respect, Integrity and Safety.  While CHRIS Kids offers a variety of services to include:  counseling, training, after-school care and residential homes.  St. Pius X will be sponsoring two JourneyZ homes, which are group homes for children and teens ages 6-18.  We will be providing the items off of their wish lists similar to Dresden Elementary and will also be hosting a Christmas decorating party where a small group of supervised students and parents will provide and decorate the resident homes and host a small party in early December.  We need assistance with the decorations and volunteers to assist with the party planning.  If you have any gently used or new decorations to donate or are interested in assisting with the party, please let us know.  We will be hosting one female and one male residential home. From future information on Chris Kids: Click Here.

Due to the tremendous support from the St. Pius family last year, we were able to assist 169 children from 55 families from Dresden Elementary. The main focus of the project is to provide the families with basic essentials and clothing.  Each child on average receives two outfits / school uniforms, a coat, a gift card  for shoes and three moderately priced toys.  In addition, several groups and families coordinated blankets, hygiene kits and Christmas stockings for all of the families. The students, individual families, St. Pius teams, clubs and organizations purchased gifts from the children’s wish lists, wrapped the presents and staffed a pick-up booth and provided transportation home to several families.  The SPX students can receive a Works of Mercy if they follow the guidelines. 

We have also had several parents coordinate girl scout and boy scout troops, and drives at their offices, which have been extremely successful.

At this point, we are trying to determine how many children we can support for the project.  If you interested in participating, you can either buy items, sponsor children or several siblings, donate Christmas decorations for CHRIS Kids or make a tax deductible monetary donation.  We also have many areas for volunteer service to include: sorting (parents only), wrapping (parents and students), coordinating and assisting with CHRIS Kids decorating party or manning the pick up both at St. Pius X for the Dresden families.  If you have any questions or are interested in assisting with the project this year or have any questions, please let us know how you would like to help  (number of children you are interested in sponsoring or buy specific items such as blankets) by emailing Anne Grabowski or Debra Coheley.  Any level of help with either purchasing gifts, assisting with sorting or wrapping is greatly appreciated.  

For more information about volunteer opportunity dates and more details on the project click here.