With Christmas and the holiday season just around the corner, it can often be easy to forget what the holiday season is all about.
The members of Georgia Highland’s own Brother2Brother organization on Paulding’s campus made a commitment to break this trend and consider others first by sponsoring the 2015 Secret Santa Program. This program aims at getting foster children and young teenagers an opportunity to receive gifts that they otherwise would not have a chance to get.
This year, there will be about 170 Paulding County foster children receiving toys from this program. These toys will be issued by the Paulding County Department of Family and Children Services.
This event was possible due to the contributions of such people as B2B President Wesly Lahens, B2B Event Coordinator Marquis Nixon and GHC Administrative Assistant Angela Spano. The Georgia Highlands team also received help from Ms. Vicki Randall from Scottsdale, GA, who is the Founder and CEO of Open Hearts to All Non-profit Organization. The combined effort of everyone involved resulted in the collection of over 200 toys, putting it at the top as the most successful GHC Paulding toy collection ever.
Wesly Lahens said, “The toy collection was a super success because we have a family environment at GHC Paulding. When there is a need, like families do, we rally and do our best to support our Paulding County community.” As Marquis Nixon inspiringly stated of the effort, “We are very active in the community and working with children. Ms. Spano gave us the opportunity to lead the drive. She has a great deal of confidence in our organization and supported us every day of the toy drive. When she told us how many children we will be touching, we did not want to let her or the children down. We know that they may not know us but we are here to do whatever we can to help.”
This Secret Santa Program was a huge success for the Paulding campus Brother2Brother organization and for everyone that was involved in it.
Pictured from left to right is Angie Chandler and Lauren Casey from Paulding County’s Department of Family and Children Services; Dr. Jon Hershey, Georgia Highlands African American Minority Male Excellence and B2B Program Director; B2B Event Coordinator Marquis Nixon; GHC Paulding Campus Administrative Assistant Angela Spano; KSU Paulding Program Manager for Recruiting and B2B Paulding Advisor Dalton Lemelle, Jr.; Brother 2 Brother Paulding Campus President Wesly Lahens. Contributed Photo