Santa Clara has partnered with Operation: Care and Comfort (OCC) in their program to Adopt a Military Family for the holidays for the last few years. This year as we began to review candidate families, there were several recently experiencing stages of homelessness. The Committee decided that rather than focus on a single family, that we would reach out to four that had been presented to us as options, which included 24 family members.

The Committee quickly went to work to address this challenge, arranging for gift cards and member donations of holiday goodies. OCC supplied new socks, beanies and other warm weather gear to supplement the chapter donations and added additional gift cards. Items were packaged in goodie baskets, hand-sewn holiday stockings were stuffed, and festive Santa bags filled to be delivered to the families to help brighten their holidays as they wait for housing.