Holidays 2026

Help transform the holiday season for our youth and their families

No child’s Christmas should lack gifts, food, and happy memories

Every year, many individuals and corporations ensure all our kids and families have gifts to open and food on the table. Together, we’ll make sure this holiday season is a great one for so many struggling right now.

If you are interested in participating in any of these holiday initiatives or learning more, please email Melissa Bramble at mbramble@domuskids.org

Our Three Main Efforts to Make the Holidays Sparkle!

THANKSGIVING

Each family that we work with gets to choose either a Thanksgiving themed bag or a general food bag that they pick up from Domus the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving.  They all additionally receive a $25 gift card at this time.  The Thanksgiving bag contains all the sides for Thanksgiving like mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, canned veggies, juice, gravy, dessert etc.  The general food bag contains things like cereal, rice, beans, tuna, snacks, mac and cheese, peanut butter and jelly and bread.  These food items help to celebrate the holiday or bridge the gap of having a child home during Thanksgiving break and not receiving free breakfast and lunch at school.   

 HOW YOU CAN HELP: Host a food drive collecting the specific items we need, have members of your team create full bags of either theme to go directly to families, donate $25 gift cards to Shop Rite or Stop and Shop

 

HOLIDAY MALL

Our annual holiday mall takes place on 12/19 and allows all of our families to come and “shop” for the children in their household and experience a real mall feeling.  Families choose their time to shop, we have 60-minute blocks.  They receive tickets to use as money to shop from hundreds of gifts set up in our gym.  They also get to pick filled stockings, shop our food pantry and receive an Am Ex gift card for every child in their household as well as a Shop Rite gift card.  We add in the food pantry and Shop Rite card as youth who are usually getting breakfast and lunch from school every day are home for 2 weeks without that support.  After gifts are chosen they check out and can choose to bring wrapping paper home with supplies or can have their items wrapped on site while they have coffee and treats in our cafe.  It is a joyous day full of holiday cheer and magic!  

 HOW YOU CAN HELP:  We rely on volunteers for many different areas and ask people to work two hours shifts, we will have sign up on our website as we get closer.  Some of the volunteer jobs are: manning the toy tables, being personal family shoppers, working the food pantry, working in our cafe, translating for families and more!  We also rely heavily on donations for this event, your team can host a toy drive, or a food drive

ANGEL FAMILIES

Our angel family program is for our families who are struggling the most and need much more support than the holiday mall can offer.  They are identified by their family advocate that works directly with them. Once identified, the advocate works with the family to fill our info packet which includes the family’s story, the needs of the parents, info about each child in the household like favorite color, descriptive words, hobbies and their wants and needs list.  I When someone reaches out to me with an interest in adopting, we talk about budget, preferences in family make up and more.  Once matched, they adopter will get the complete info packet with some other instructions, and the shopping can begin.  Adopters can wrap the gifts or not (but we do ask for paper to be provided if they don’t) and label all gifts regardless of if they are wrapped or not.  They then drop off everything here and the family’s advocate delivers to the parent(s).  We have many kinds of adopters, individuals, families (who do this in leu of exchanging gifts with each other), entire corporations, specific teams within an organization, churches, nursery schools and more.  We also have groups who are across the country who adopt an angel family and direct ship everything to me.  For groups or individuals that want to make the commitment but don’t have the time to shop, I create Amazon wish lists that they just go in and purchase. We can cater to every adopter’s situation so there are no barriers preventing someone who wants to adopt a family from doing so.   

 HOW YOU CAN HELP: Adopt an angel family as a team, individual, family or however else you see fit.  Help recruit more people who are willing to adopt.  Spread the word of how to bring holiday cheer to families in need! 

To adopt an Angel Family, please email Melissa Bramble at mbramble@domuskids.org



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