Anchor Bay Giving Tree Helps Record Number of Families in Need

The Anchor Bay Community Giving Tree program is supporting a record number of families this year, thanks to local residents who donated.

“We hit our all-time high this year with 70 families and 182 children,” Anchor Bay Community Giving Tree President Sherry Lawfield said. “It’s wonderful to see so many communities come together and help the less fortunate in our own backyards in times of struggle.”

The program was created in 1999 when the Anchor Bay Community Giving Tree Committee partnered with a local Girl Scout troop and the New Baltimore Police Department to help families during Christmastime, according to the group’s website.

Committee members put giving trees on display in various locations around town. The program encourages local residents to take a tag from the tree and donate gifts to local families in need.

All donations go directly to the families helped through the program.

“Without all the community support we receive, we would of never been able to help so many families this year,” Lawfield noted.

She said the group coordinates with Chesterfield and New Baltimore Goodfellows to compare families, making sure that only one organization is serving them.

“Doing this and working together gives all of our organizations an opportunity to work together and help as many community families as possible by verifying we do not have any duplicate families on our lists,” she said. “If we do discover we have them, we remove that particular family from one list and make room for another.”