Video: Vardaman Gift Distribution

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VARDAMAN, Miss. (WCBI) — You may remember the “Change For Christmas” Project spear headed by students and teachers at Vardaman Elementary. Thursday is distribution day and needy children and their families in Calhoun County are benefiting from the effort.

On the campus at Vardaman Elementary School, gifts are being loaded into the cars of families needing a little help from their neighbors this Christmas. WCBI News told you of that successful Christmas Project where students gave their spare change monies and teachers encourage people in the community to pitch in. Over nine years the program has grown to where they are unable to deliver.

“We have served in our community 25 families. And we have served over 100 kids in our community,” said Jenny Hill, VES Teacher.

“And this year we did exceptionally good. We, our students raised $1,793,” said Annie Anderson, VES Teacher.

This year is sure to be the best Christmas ever as just jingling jangling money, becomes sufficient for families that do not have enough to make ends meet, from year to year.

“We hope so and I think so because they’ve been tearing up and hugging us and saying Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad. So, they are very excited. I think this is going to help them out this year,” said Hill.

“Ahhhh, they are very emotional. And they can’t thank us enough. And a lot of them told us that if it wasn’t for this their kids would not have Christmas,” said Annie Anderson, VES Teacher.

Not only do these families receive coats, other articles of clothing, food, and toys, based on need and amount collected some receive supermarket gift certificates.

“Ahhhh my heart just feels glad that we’ve done this. Its just a wonderful thing that we can do every year. It makes our Christmas special,” said Jeannie Winter, VES Teacher.

Through this year’s Change For Christmas Project, volunteers collected from students and the community about six thousand dollars for needy families. That’s two thousand more than last year.”