Care-to-Share sponsor, Michelle Foutz:

Q: What is your role in Care to Share?
A: As the sponsor, I provide guidance. The students do all the work, but I make sure they know what they are doing.

Q: What is the goal of the Care to Share?
A: Our goal is to help as many people as we can during the holiday season who don’t have the resources that they need. (The resources) aren’t just Christmas gifts, but basic necessities like socks, gloves and hats to help these families that are way below the poverty line.

Q: How long as the program being going on at CHS?
A: The program has been going on long before I got here in the 1999-2000 school year. It was run by a different organization, and then that organization disappeared. We then chose United Way and their (United) Christmas Service and we have been using it ever since.

Q: What inspired or influenced the change of dollar amount for the full, half and quarter person?
A: We can now sponsor more people.The new amount for the full person is now $200, it already exceeds the requirement by United Way. They altered their requirement and reduced it, and we reduced ours at the same time, and it will hopefully benefit more families.

Q: What finalized the decision of changing the amount?
A: I told the group that we needed to change it. With some of these families, we have 10 people in a family and if we spend $300 per person and they have to come pick up the gifts, it becomes difficult for them to find transportation to get the gifts home. That was one of the additional benefits because now it is more manageable and easier if the dollar amount is $200 per person rather than $300 per person. We can hopefully now reach more people.

Q: How is the reduction expected to impact the families?
A: Hopefully now we can get more SRTs participating and then we can sponsor more people, making it easier on the families for pick up of the gifts.

Q: Does the reduced amount provide more or less to the families?
A: It will gain a larger amount of families, but fewer items per family. However, it’s still well beyond the recommended amount per family. It’s very hard to get more for the money because it could be $50 for a winter coat, but it’s $200 for a full person. For these people, to even qualify for this program you have to be significantly (below) the poverty line, so we’re just trying to give them a little bit more support than the minimum expectation by United Way. Even though it’s less per person, we still feel like we are contributing a lot to the family and it will allow us to free up resources to help more people.

Q: When are gifts expected to be delivered to the families?
A: Monday Dec. 18.

Q: Have totals from past years influenced the change in money?
A: One part of it has to do with the fact that we are trying to keep in mind what (United Way’s) guideline is but we are also trying to make transportation easier for pick up so more people can be helped.