Merakey’s foster care program provides holiday gifts
Staff from Merakey’s foster care program in Washington County teamed up with students from Upper St. Clair’s Boyce Middle School and Chartiers-Houston’s Allison Park Elementary School to collect and deliver holiday gifts to several agencies working with children who are homeless, in foster care, or in need of support. For more than 15 years, Merakey has partnered with the local schools for this project. Merakey staff met with students at both school locations to pick up hundreds of decorated shoe boxes filled with gifts, small toys, hats, gloves and hygiene products. At each site, students and Merakey staff form a human chain to move the shoeboxes from the school to the delivery truck. Selected students joined the Merakey staff to deliver the shoeboxes to the offices of outreach programs that serve the region, including the Washington County Children and Youth Services and a local soup kitchen. After the shoeboxes are delivered, participating students were invited back to Merakey’s local office for a pizza party and to learn more about the foster care system, youth homelessness, and how programs work to assist youth in need. Students are pictured with the more than 800 boxes that were collected this year, and also forming a human chain to move the shoeboxes from the school to the delivery truck.