Jakelle’s Christmas Box
JaKelle’s Christmas Box began in 2013 as a small “Gift-Away” for children in foster care. Over the years, it has grown into a week-long event where foster and kinship parents can come and do their holiday “shopping” with Helen’s Hope Chest.
Thousands of children are provided with gifts, books, stuffed animals, and quilts at no cost to their foster families. The spirit of the season is felt throughout the week as volunteers help the families pick out the perfect gifts.
“JaKelle loved Christmas. The lights, sounds and smells of Christmas always made her happy. She loved to go on car rides to look at Christmas lights around the neighborhoods. She also loved to give and receive gifts – and we as parents and brothers loved to give her gifts, and lots of them! On Christmas morning, the tradition in our family is to have someone play “Santa” and pass out the gifts under the tree to everyone. Everyone would receive a gift from under the tree and then in order we would open the gifts.
This process would be repeated until all of the gifts were opened. An interesting thing always happened though: When her three older brother were done opening all of their presents, JaKelle would still often have dozens of presents to open —and these didn’t include all of the ones Mom didn’t put under the Christmas tree but gave her later! Over the last number of weeks as we have thought about this first Christmas without JaKelle, we quickly realized that we wanted to continue to “shower” JaKelle with lots of gifts. We came up with the idea of JaKelle’s Christmas Box. We decided that we will continue to buy lots and lots of gifts for JaKelle and put them in this special Christmas Box. We hope to fill many big boxes by inviting all of our extended family members, friends and everyone in the community to join us.
We will then contribute these gifts to an organization that serves the needs of children at Christmas in her name. We determined that Helen’s Hope Chest would be the perfect organization.”
—Lynn and Jana Westergard
Jakelle Westergard 1994-2012
John’s Room is named after the son of a friend of Helen’s Hope Chest who tragically passed away before they could celebrate his first birthday. To ensure his joyful spirit lives on, his family proposed creating a special room at Helen’s Hope Chest where children and teens in foster care would be able to select gifts for their Birthday. Their wish is that every child, no matter their background and circumstances, is able to experience the innocent wonders of childhood.
John’s room is a place where kids and teens are encouraged to celebrate themselves, where they can just be young, and where they can share John’s joy of carefree play. If you would like to help keep John’s Room stocked with NEW toys, games and stuffed animals, please consider a financial gift or drop off donations at Helen’s Hope Chest. .
