As many people rush to get Black Friday deals early this year, ILYA (Independent Living for Young Adults) is also rushing to get things together for youth who have aged out of foster care. We will be preparing gifts for each youth including a gift card with which they can purchase something nice for themselves. We would love to be able to make the gifts more personal this year but with COVID restrictions, we must all adjust.

We’ve received a terrific offer of a jar of honey for each youth from Doyle Dobbins which I’m sure will be a very welcome surprise for the youth’s holiday treats. We hope many of you will also support our Holiday Giving project, too.

We can only accept monetary donations at this time as we need to keep all the gifts the same for ease of delivery for the Independent Living Coordinators and our project leaders, Carolyn Gibson and Martha Gessler.

Next week we need to calculate the donations we’ve received to determine what denomination gift cards we can purchase. We want to make them as generous as possible. If you can, please donate this week by sending a check to the church with “ILYA” on the memo line or use your credit card on the church website here, or through the GivePlus+ app on your mobile device. Thank you for your support bringing holiday cheer to these most deserving youth.