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The Child Welfare Scholar Program at New Mexico State University is on a mission to collect holiday gifts for children across Doña Ana County – and needs your help to meet its goal.
The program, part of the School of Social Work in NMSU’s College of Health, Education and Social Transformation, hosts a gift drive each holiday season to benefit children in Las Cruces and surrounding communities through a long-standing partnership with New Mexico’s Children, Youth and Families Department. This year, organizers want to collect enough gifts for approximately 170 children.
“We’ve partnered with CYFD since 2011 to provide gifts to children in our community who are system-impacted through CYFD for the holiday season,” said Mónica Montoya, director of the Child Welfare Scholar Program.
Each year, Montoya’s program works with CYFD case workers from the Las Cruces office to identify the number of area children in need of a holiday gift. Montoya’s team then creates angel tags with information about each child and their gift preference to hang on Christmas trees throughout the Las Cruces campus.
Anyone interested in providing a gift can pick up a tag in the School of Social Work lobby in the Health and Social Services Building, Suite 210, or in the HEST Dean’s Office in O’Donnell Hall, Suite 301. Tags can also be requested virtually by contacting Olivia Ceballes at 575-921-4727 or oceballe@nmsu.edu.
All gifts must be dropped off unwrapped in the School of Social Work lobby before 5 p.m. Friday, Dec. 9. Next week, Montoya said her staff will wrap the gifts and transport them to the CYFD office for distribution before Christmas.
“We still have plenty of tags available,” she said. “I’m hopeful we’ll be able to have all 170-plus tags taken by this Friday.”
Montoya added that there’s a particular need for gifts suitable for older children.
“We’re hoping our community helps us make the holidays a little brighter for these children and youths, given their circumstances,” she said. “We want them to experience Christmas in a meaningful way.”
