KINDH (Kids In Need During The Holidays)

KINDH provides under privileged children in Montgomery and Fairfax County with a memorable holiday experiences by purchasing, wrapping and delivering gifts. We also provide each family with gift cards for their holiday meal.  We seek volunteers to help by adopting a family and shop, wrap and deliver to the family, donating new toys, clothes or gift cards.

Please visit www.kindh.org to learn more about us and how you can help.

Volunteers (adults and students) organize gifts from the family wish lists, wrap and prepare them for delivery.  Students can also make signs/posters for the schools who participate in collecting gifts for KINDH

KINDH was able to help 280 Families with a total of 737 Children this holiday season.   

Thank you to all the volunteers, friends, families, schools and companies who donated to KINDH - every single donation of your time and money makes a difference!  Your generosity helped a lot of kids!     

We also want to thank our fantastic delivery teams, individual volunteers and the amazing Montgomery County Police MCPD and Fire Teams MCFD.  We also delivered several big items - 8 bikes, a bassinet and stroller for a newborn, a fully decorated christmas tree and several BEDS with all the bedding!

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For each of the families, we provide each child with toys and clothes from their wish list.  The most popular toy requests were Legos, baby dolls, Barbies and the Barbie Dream House, Squishmallows, Hot Wheels, action figures, trucks, games, arts & crafts, educational toys and books. Most of the clothing items were coats, clothes for school, socks, sneakers, warm boots, sweaters and pants/leggings. For the teenagers, we give them gift cards to VISA and/or Target, Starbucks and Amazon so they could pick out their own gifts.  We also provided each family a $50-150 dollar gift card for their holiday meal.  We also donated 50 new coats to the Mont. County Head Start coat closet for children that come to school without a coat. SUPPORTING A FAMILY

We had a TON of fabulous shoppers this year.  Without their support we would never be able to adopt so many families.  We had many wonderful folks that adopted between one (1) to ten (10) families. This year we had so many shoppers, there are too many to list! 

A special thanks to the students and families of Potomac Elementary School, Beverly Farms Elementary School, Wayside Elementary School, Seven Locks Elementary School, Georgetown Hill Early School (both the Potomac Village Campus and the Bells Mill/Potomac Campus) and the Winston Churchill High School Athletic Department for all their donations and support.  Together these schools and their families sponsored over 250 children. 

We also want to thank Xerox Corporation, Shapiro & Duncan Inc, Financial Advantage Associates Inc., The Bender JCC of Greater Washington, The Neighborhood of Washingtonian Woods, Adobe Systems, FTI Consulting, AFCEA International, Salesforce, Financial 360, Baker Tilly, Definitive Logic, OJC Consulting, Dignari, MassMutual of Greater Washington, Pioneer, Marriott International, AECOM, Modern Oral and Facial Surgery, Voltera, Edgeworth Economics, Potomac Management Resources, Montgomery County Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, Dine Development Corp who "adopted" many families, donated money, toys and food gift cards; and even helped deliver.

A special shoutout of appreciation to Joan Roth, Amy Aquilino, Michele Peters and Gina Shawl for everything they do each and every year to support KINDH!  We could not help so many families without their leadership and support!

WRAPPING

Thank you for the wrapping volunteers this year.  Thank you to the Potomac Palatine Neighborhood Book Club and the B'nai Tzedek Sisterhood and my amazing friends who came over to wrap, wrap and wrap more!

DELIVERY

A special thanks to the KINDH Delivery Teams and the Montgomery County Police MCPD and Fire Departments MCFD for delivering the gifts this year.  Without the Police and Fire helping our organization, we would not be able to deliver to the homes of the families.  A special shout out to Lieutenant Irvin Smith and Lieutenant Kathy Estrada for helping us organize the deliveries in advance of our 2 delivery days!  

I also want to thank the Montgomery County Head Start FSWs and the School Counselors for all their assistance getting the last minute packages to the families 

In Summary......

I have been coordinating this program for 23 years and it is amazing to see what has evolved over the years and how we can pull together as a community to help others in need.  We started with a few volunteers donating money and adopting 10 families and now with donations from friends, families and companies we are able to provide for many families.       

Please remember to visit www.kindh.org to see the many pictures. If you have pictures you want to share from your experience please send to kindhinfo@gmail.com.   You can also see our article from the Washington Post last year and our feature on the CBS Evening News with Nora O'Donnell.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/24/poor-kids-christmas-gifts-secret-santa/

Maryland charity gives gifts to kids in need during the holidays - CBS News

Happy 2024!!!!