Holiday Help & Party Time ~ Voice Of The Township
The Wayne Township Trustee Office is celebrating the 2023 holiday season as we have done for the past several years. We are assisting our families in collaboration with the Allen County Christmas Bureau; we are handing out hams and turkeys for people’s 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 families in need. This year Wayne Township connected close to 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 are wrapped, boxed, and organized by the Bureau before our team picks them up for delivery to the families.
The Allen County Christmas Bureau was founded in 1936. It is a non-profit corporation dedicated to assisting families in Allen County with gifts for Christmas consisting of toys, clothing, food, paper products, personal hygiene items, cleaning needs, and other household items which are collected for families through the Adopt-a-Family Program.
The Christmas Bureau works with social service agencies whose case managers refer their clients for assistance. The clients are then matched with businesses, churches, individuals, organizations, and schools who have requested a family they can “adopt” for the holiday season. The 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 the 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 forty families’ gifts while worrying that someone might not be able to make it to our office. It all ran so much more smoothly for us to deliver the gifts, and everyone on the staff gets to participate including Trustee Austin Knox and Deputy Dominique Dickey who get to play dressed-down Santa.
On Thursday December 14th, we will be holding our fourth annual Ham and Turkey Giveaway scheduled from 10 to 11:00 AM or while supplies last, at our township office at 320 E Superior Street. We’ve spent the last couple of months planning, collecting money and purchasing hams and turkeys as this is always a popular event. If you are coming by, plan to arrive early!
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 continuation of the skating parties 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 Saturday, December 16th from 4:00 to 6:00—all free and open to the public.
We are looking forward to another happy holiday season, and we hope that all of you are, too!
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