Orange County Branch Newsletter

January 2016

Younger Member Forum

YMF - Families Helping Families Become an Elf

By: Gibson Phan

ASCE Orange County YMF and CH2M Hill Jump teamed up to help bring holiday joy to families in the local community this season by volunteering as elves and reindeers. Partnering through the Families Helping Families program on December 13^th , 2015, YMF and Jump adopted a family and helped out at the programs North Pole.

The Families Helping Families program was created by the Child Abuse Prevention Center (CAPC) in order to help bring stability to families in desperate situations facing abuse and neglect this Christmas. As YMF volunteers we were divided into two groups: elves and reindeers. The elves help organized all the donated gifts at the Adopt-a-family home base and sorted them for each particular receiving families. The reindeers loaded their sleighs (vehicles) and delivered the gifts to each family.  It was a great experience to help make this Christmas a joyous time for the families and see the children’s faces light up. And it was a pleasure to knowing that we were able to make a memorable, happy moment in other people lives.