The Cupertino Courier
Community
Some holiday gift donations to CCS weren't very cheerful
By Crystal Lu
It's the time of the year when people dispose of the extra trash generated by the holidays. Staff members at Cupertino Community Services also found themselves having to throw out junk. But that junk was supposed to be donated gifts to needy families.
This holiday season was the first time the CCS Adopt-A-Family program asked donors to keep their gifts unwrapped. It was not only an environmental decision to save paper, but also a protective one to screen gifts before giving them to the adopted families, according to Kim Ferm, program director.
There were 122 low-income families in the program. Each family submitted a wish list of 10 to 15 items. Donors were encouraged, but not required, to follow the list.
When donors delivered their gifts on Dec. 18 as scheduled, CCS staff went through all 122 bags, each containing 10 to 15 items, to ensure that there were no recalled or unsafe toys.
What they discovered were approximately 70 items that were not necessarily unsafe, but definitely inappropriate as Christmas presents.
They were shocked to realize that a donor gave a dirty lunch box with a broken hammer and rusty tools in it to match the toolbox on the wish list. They also found outdated electronic products, such as a 51/4-inch IBM floppy disk that can't work on any of today's computers and a VCR programmer in broken packaging.
Other used items include old books, wrinkled or stained second-hand clothes, incomplete sets of stationery and worn-out stuffed animals.
"We have to preserve people's dignity," said Naomi Nakano-Matsumoto, executive director of CCS. "Even though the adopted families are going through a hard time economically, it doesn't mean they should be treated disrespectfully. Who would want these things for Christmas?"
Nakano-Matsumoto emphasizes that the inappropriate gifts only accounted for a small percentage of the approximately 1,500 items CCS received, and CCS is always grateful for the tremendous response from the community every year.
Ferm adds that the Adopt-A-Family program is meant to bring holiday joy to low-income families, so it doesn't collect used items as Salvation Army or Goodwill do.
CCS withheld all the inappropriate items and made up for them by giving gift cards to the recipient families.
CCS will donate some of the withheld items to Goodwill and junk the rest.
Junky gifts for the poor on the holidays are not a big problem for Sunnyvale Community Services, although it happens and it's not that uncommon for other nonprofit agencies, said Nancy Tivol, SCS executive director.
"It's minor," she said. "We always have a few people who give stuff that's used, but we specify that we want it new for the holidays."
Throughout the rest of the year, the nonprofit accepts "gently used" clothes, toys and household items, although people's definition of "gently used" can vary, she said.
This year, SCS served a record 1,166 families, 120 of which had more than six members. It appeared that food donations may have been down this year, but SCS had not finished calculating those results.
Staff writer Cody Kraatz contributed to this article.