PUEBLO, COLO. -- About 1,700 children who are living in poverty received holiday gifts in Pueblo Wednesday, all as part of a privately funded operation to help the kids have a Christmas.
Operation Christmas Good Cheer is a program sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Service, Employment and Redevelopment (RMSER) designed to help students in its program and their siblings, all of whom come from a financially poor family, receive gifts during the holidays.
The organization helps provide education and training to Colorado's disadvantaged families, and officials set up the fundraiser at the corporate office in Denver, as well as branch offices in the Walsenburg, Alamosa, Grand Junction and Trinidad communities. The goal is to have community members and organizations who can afford it donate money, which is then used to buy the gifts for the children.
Best of all, the gifts are given by the parents or guardians so the children know their loved ones remembered them during the holidays.
RMSER officials said most organizations average about $30 per month for child sponsors.
"It's not an exaggeration to say that for most of these students, gifts they receive from sponsors will be the only ones they get this holiday season," Jermaine Stafford, RMSER's Director of Youth & Community Service Division, said in a statement. "Most to all of the students are low-income, and many will spend their holidays here at our center. More than the material items themselves, it means a lot to the students just to know that someone remembered them."
Roughly 522 of the 1,700 children are members of the RMSER program. More than 7,000 gifts will be given statewide by Friday thanks to the Good Cheer program.
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