Skating Through The Holidays ~ Voice Of The Township
The Wayne Township Trustee Office is celebrating the holiday season in traditional style for us; we are assisting our families with help from the Christmas Bureau, we’ve been collecting donations from community partners to hand out hams and turkeys for holiday meals and we are holding our annual Holiday Party at Bell’s Skating Rink.
Every year our office partners with the Allen County Christmas Bureau to provide holiday presents for needy families. This year Wayne Township, through our program organized by directors Tarra Martin and Shatayah Little connected 40 of our client families with presents and holiday trimmings that come from generous donors in the community who each adopt a family to shop for. These gifts come wrapped, boxed, and organized by the Bureau before arriving at our office.
From their Facebook Page; “The Allen County Christmas Bureau, Inc., founded in 1936, is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to assisting needy families in Allen County with gifts for Christmas. These gifts consist of food, paper products, personal hygiene items, cleaning needs, toys, clothing, and other household needs and are collected for the families through the Adopt a Family Program.
The Christmas Bureau works with social service agencies whose case managers refer their clients to the Christmas Bureau for assistance. The clients are then matched with businesses, churches, individuals, organizations and schools who have requested a family “to adopt” for the holiday season. The family names of the clients and the adopters are strictly confidential, one from the other. The adopters bring the gifts to the Christmas Bureau for pick-up and delivery by the case managers.”
In the past our client families would come to the township to pick up their gifts, but starting in 2020, the middle of the pandemic, we changed our procedure and began delivering the packages to the clients’ homes. This change worked out better for everyone. The head of household who used to have to round up transportation and possibly take off work to come to us could now just arrange a time for us to drop off their gifts, and we didn’t have to carve out office space to house 40 families’ gifts and then worry that someone might not be able to make it to our office. It all ran so much more smoothly.
We’ve spent the last couple of months planning, collecting money and purchasing hams and turkeys for our annual Ham and Turkey Giveaway scheduled for December 15th from 10 to 11:00 AM or while supplies last, at our township office at 320 E Superior Street. This is always a popular event, so if you are coming by arrive early!
And our last public event of the year will be a party at Bell’s Skating Rink at 7009 IN-930 New Haven where we’ll celebrate the holidays with free food, prizes and skate rental. This event is a revival of the skates we used to hold at the Roller Dome South in Waynedale before that venue was closed in 2015. We are looking forward to gathering with kids and their families for some fun, excitement and camaraderie on Sunday, December 18 from 4:30 to 7:30—all free and open to public.
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