The Christmas tree in the Center for Community Engagement has tags with children’s Christmas wishes.
Anna Hörnell
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The annual holiday gift drive began Monday – a campus tradition sponsored by the Center for Community Engagement (CCE) that aims to bring holiday cheer to children in San Luis Obispo County.
“It’s a really great opportunity to give back to the children in the community in a small way. It would make their day,” Tayler Duprel, the AmeriCorps member working at the CCE said.
The gift drive allows students, faculty, staff and community members to fulfill the Christmas wishes of local children. Anyone interested in participating can go to the CCE in Julian A. McPhee University Union (building 65), room 217.
“There’s a Christmas tree with tags hanging on it, and each tag has the gift wish of a child on it, so you just pick whichever one you want,” Duprel said.
The gifts vary in price from $15 to $20. Participants are asked to deliver the wrapped gifts to the CCE office by Wednesday, Dec. 6. Following the deadline, local partner organizations will distribute the gifts to the children.
About 250 children have written gift requests this year, and Duprel hopes every wish is fulfilled by the deadline.
“That’s a really big goal of mine, and already today, we’ve had 10 to 15 people come in,” she said. “I’m really excited and really impressed.”