Financial District Neighbors Brighten Holidays for Needy Kids and Seniors
Neighbors in the Financial District are building on a local holiday tradition by partnering with the Salvation Army to send Christmas gifts to hundreds of impoverished children and elders around the New York area. Lissa Hussian and her mother, Sallyjo Levine, both live at 15 Broad Street. Along with Jessica Grunfeld and Grace Lee, who live nearby, they are participating in the Angel Tree program, through which the Salvation Army each year puts new clothes and toys beneath the tree for more than one million children (dubbed “Angels”) who would otherwise go without Christmas gifts.
Under this initiative, local groups of volunteers sign up to handle small batches of gifts for specific recipients (identified by the Salvation Army), based on each group’s capacity to organize and raise funds. This year, the neighbors participating in the 15 Broad Street Angel Tree effort, which was founded in 2010, have scaled up their activities to reach more than 800 beneficiaries, both young children and older adults.
For Ms. Hussian, the undertaking is “a family passion project – my dad is put to work breaking down all the boxes we receive from sponsors who ship their gifts, my 14-year-old daughter donates every dollar she gets throughout the year to buying gifts, and my husband wrote a computer program for us to automatically populate our emails with the Angels’ information from the Salvation Army spreadsheets, so we can cut down somewhat on the administrative work.
“The group of us have always sponsored Angels,” she adds, “but we officially took over this project from another building resident in 2018. We immediately had plans to grow it so we could help more people. And this year has been a record for us. We’re supporting 609 children and 197 seniors. We were contacted by a caseworker from Salvation Army’s 14th Street location, who is now in Sunset Park. She has 19 Angels from her after-school program who are without sponsors, so we were able to complete those wish lists with extras that we collect throughout the year.”
“We’ve worked with several small- to medium-sized local companies for holiday giving,” Ms. Hussian notes, “but 90 percent of our sponsors are individuals who want to contribute. We have around a dozen sponsors who have been with us for all 15 years, and one longtime participant who relocated to Portugal, but still supports Angels via our gift registry.”
“Our kids range in age from newborn to 13,” she says, “although last week we were asked if we could find sponsors for four older teens who just became orphans and are in the temporary care of their grandmother.” She adds, “their wishes were heartbreakingly modest: one wanted a Monopoly game, while another asked for toy dinosaurs. When we asked what we could get the grandmother, she only wanted a robe. We sent much more, but it gives you a sense of how modest some of these families are, which is why we love to spoil them as much as we can.”
Ms. Lee, who serves in the State Assembly, says, “my family has been sponsoring a family every year through Angel Tree for the last four years. My kids especially love helping to pick out items off the Christmas wish lists and getting the opportunity to deliver the presents to the Angel Tree drop-off at 15 Broad.” She adds that many of the gift recipients are living in the City’s shelter system.