FAMILY-TO-FAMILY CREATIVE CARE PACKAGES FOR FAMILIES AT HOME DURING COVID-19 ISOLATION
South Sudanese Enrichment for Families (SSEF) is a non-profit organization that provides educational and social programming for seventy-five Sudanese families who have resettled in Massachusetts. Most of the families live in Malden, Chelsea, Lynn, Revere, and Everett and a few live in Springfield, Westford, Littleton and Lincoln.
Most of the children do not have many toys. In an effort to provide some fun and joy for children at home due to COVID-19, SSEF started the Creative Care Package program. The Refugee and Immigrant Subcommittee of the Outreach Committee is inviting parishioners to support this. Creative Care Packages can include items such as arts and crafts supplies, and indoor toys: crayons, paints, drawing paper, maze books, or anything from the link found at the end of this page.
This is not a collection at church. It is an independent project and a great way to involve your children in creating some fun for other children. This program will be running from June 10 – July 5. If you would like to participate, please follow the steps below:
- Email the Executive Director at SSEF, Susan Winship. Let her know that you are from St. Paul’s and that you would like to be matched with a family. Please indicate what age group of kids you would prefer.
- Susan will match you with a family and give you the children’s ages and gender and their mailing address. Some of the families have many children (7 or 8), so she would match two volunteers with a larger family.
- Create your care package! It can be anything from the flyer linked below, or other items from your imagination. It can be one item or a few items – the children are very excited just to be receiving mail! The items can be new or gently used. It would be helpful to include storage containers if you send multi-piece items like Legos or Playdough (which dries out).
- Please include a note in your package with your name and email address so the family can let you know they received your package.
- Please send your package by UPS and not by US mail, when it is ready to send. Unfortunately, there have been some thefts with using regular mail as packages are left outside their door.
- Please email Barbara Perry or Jennifer Wylie to let us know you sent a package, so we can count the number of packages donated by St. Paul’s families.
- Once the family receives the package, you will receive an email confirming they received it.
If you have any questions about the project, please let Barbara or Jennifer know. Thank you for your support!