By Drew Johnson
The holidays are always a busy time for us at South County Community Services. We throw two big parties for our families and for area seniors in December, coordinate gifting adoptions and Thanksgiving and Christmas meal deliveries for over 70 families, run the Trees of Life fundraiser, and take in as many food and toy donations as we can! This year has been even busier than usual as we are once again working with the Kalamazoo Foundation, United Way, and now the County of Kalamazoo on tornado relief efforts in Pavilion Estates—so far, we have prevented 12 evictions this month and are working on coordinating repairs for homes that were damaged by the storm.
Needless to say, we can use all the help we can get over the holidays. Fortunately, we have had a lot of it! It all starts with the planning—back in September we met with our gifting partners to set our process for the year. This year we had an amazing group: St Martin of Tours, Lakeland Reformed, Vicksburg United Methodist, Centre Avenue Church of God, The Bridge, and Ada Bible Church congregations all adopted families this year, as well as several private donors and local businesses (which is new for us!): A+O Molding, Mezanmi Café, Vicksburg Maker’s Market, and Oopsy Daisy.
Our staff and board planned most of the parties, but we couldn’t have done it without a huge group of volunteers; Marian Steffens and Robin Maple headline the family party every year—they do the decorations and planning, but there were so many other people involved that I know I’ll miss a few: Diann Stender, Andrew Lyle, Mehran Nayeem, Grace Cherette, Cindy and Mike Palmer (aka Santa), Katie Grossman, Chris Dick, Lorna Landrum, Julie Merrill, Jackie Skinner, Sue Gilbert, Dawn Crippen, Barb Compton, Molly Schake, Mary Ann Doyle, Steve Richards, and a fleet of Generous Hands volunteers: Carole Boal, Cyndi White, Kay Anderson, Jamie Cree, Jan Modderman-Hui, Anne Liggett, Paula and Dave Schriemer, Mark Louis, Brian and Maureen Dobbie, Ken and Jill Weyenberg, Sheila Goole, and Chris Kosiba. Meijer and Gilbert and Ivy were both there with volunteers and gifts as well—Meijer brought materials for cookie decorating and Gilbert and Ivy donated books for our Book Nook (we give out one free book to every child who attends).
As far as food goes, St Catherine’s donated the Thanksgiving meals and completed deliveries for us, as they do every year (they do SUCH a good job!) and a group led by an event organizer who wished to stay anonymous (you can tell how grateful I am to him since I usually wouldn’t honor such a humble request!) solicited donations, shopped for discounts, and packed and delivered Christmas meals. He had a great group of volunteers as well, including several Tobey Elementary teachers.
Here at the office, we had Doug DeLong and Carol Brockway making reminder calls for deliveries and parties, Joe Fojtik putting up trees and hanging ornaments, and EVERYONE helped out with our holiday mailings.
The end of the year is always a little bittersweet for me. After the holidays things slow down a bit (although this year might be different with the Pavilion Estates work ongoing) and people are holed up recovering from all of the activity of the past month or two. It feels good to look back on the work that we have accomplished over the past year and think ahead to what we want to do in the future. In 2025, we’ll have over 100 home repairs to document, an annual report to get out in January, new Senior Center programming to develop, grants to write and track and spend, and probably a few things that I haven’t thought of yet. But for now, I’m holing up.
Drew Johnson lives in Kalamazoo and is the Director at South County Community Services. He has a small quarter acre homestead with chickens, bees, and hops (and more!), a wonderful wife, and three energetic children. He can be reached at 649-2901 or ajohnson@southcountycs.com
For more information on South County Community Services, please check out our Facebook page at facebook.com/southcountycs or visit our website: southcountycs.com.
