With less than two weeks until Christmas, these Santa's helpers are
busy wrapping presents for needy children.
In the next few days, they hope this huge warehouse will fill up with
thousands more gifts.
Jennifer Cullenbine, The Family Giving Tree: "The generosity of the
community, it's incredible. What I have learned more than anything else is
that people will give if you ask them."
The warehouse is run by a group called The Family Giving Tree. It was
started by Jennifer Cullenbine when she was in business school at San Jose
State. Jennifer had a seen a Christmas tree in a mall with cards from
low-income children asking for holiday gifts. She wrote a school paper
about how to expand the program.
Cullenbine: "It just made sense to me to go to corporate America and
say, 'Hewlett Packard, will you hang these wish cards up and have your
employees who have jobs and can afford these things to buy the gifts for
the needy kids in the area.'"
Jennifer got a B- on her paper, and was told her idea would never work.
But she was determined to try. After almost 100 companies turned her down,
she finally got some, including Hewlett Packard, to say yes.
Cullenbine: "We had 28 companies have giving trees and we helped 4,000
kids that first year."
Fourteen years later, The Family Giving Tree has 800 Bay Area companies
donating more than 50,000 gifts.
This group is from National Semiconductor, which sponsors employee
shopping sprees. Employees pick the children's names and requests off the
tree, then head out around the store to choose the gifts.
Ajay Padgaonkar, National Semiconductor: "Oh, it's giving back, this is
Christmas time. This is giving back to the community. It's good to be
doing this.))
For every two gifts an employee buys, their boss buys a third.
Ildiko Kapin, National Semiconductor: "Needy families, children in our
community, that's my Christmas."
The Family Giving Tree brings in even more gifts through a partnership
with Wells Fargo Bank. Almost every Bay Area branch has a tree.
Gina Williams, Wells Fargo: "My first year, I was really amazed when I
saw customers come in. It was a week before Christmas with grocery carts
filled with Christmas gifts for the kids."
Now another partnership is taking the giving operation high tech. Josh
McFarland was a student at Stanford when he picked a name off a giving
tree, and suddenly he had an idea.
Josh McFarland: "I realized that this is something that just needs to
be done on the Internet, so I drove straight back to the dorm room. We
plotted it out and in the course of about four weeks we had built the Web
site, gotten all the toys and gotten all the sponsors."
The Web site is called My Two Front Teeth.
Josh McFarland: "We could not find a name. Every Internet address you
could think of was taken … wish tree, giving, toys for children,
everything you could think of. And it just sort of hit me, 'all I want for
Christmas is, all I want for Christmas is MyTwoFrontTeeth.org.
With a few simple clicks you can choose a child, buy a gift and fill a
wish without ever even going to a store.
Josh McFarland: "We are tapping into a whole set of people that
actually just give online because they didn't have time before or they
didn't think about it before."
The children choose their gifts out of a catalog.
These four-year-olds attend a pre-school for very low-income children
in San Jose. Some might not get a gift without the Web site donations.
Now, thanks to MyTwoFrontTeeth.org, the presents are being delivered on
Monday. The kids can't wait.
And so ABC7 Salutes Jennifer Cullenbine and Josh McFarland and
the thousands of other volunteers who are making needy children's wishes
come true for the holidays.
How To Help
There are still many more wishes to
be filled. If you'd like to get a gift for a low-income child, you can
find a Family Giving Tree at almost every Wells Fargo Bank or visit mytwofrontteeth.org. (Click here for a complete list of locations.)
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