Cameron County Christmas Gift Program
A Heartfelt Thanks to Cameron County Residents & Organizations
We want to thank every business, organization, church, and individual in (or from) Cameron County who helped to make this year’s Cameron County Christmas Gift Program such a success!
Last year, 2024, was an extremely challenging year with record setting enrollment and limited funding, so coming into 2025, we knew we needed to make some big changes
. We set out a goal to raise $10,000. We not only succeeded but far surpassed that goal with just shy of $15,000 raised! This allowed us to not only finish buying gifts for all “angel tree tags” that were left on the trees at the end of November, but to also ensure all children within a family had a similar and sufficient amount of gifts.
This year we were able to serve 184 children within our community from 83 local families, and by the look of it, I think we were able to fulfill their wishlists more than ever. Of course, we hope that 2026 fundraising is just as successful so we can continue this program as long as possible, especially with growing need in our community.
A few new things we did this year included fundraising at Weekend in the Wilds, a hot dog sale funded by Emporium Food Mart, as well as reaching out to local businesses for donations.
We also utilized Venmo and Amazon Wishlist for easier accessibility to those no longer in the area who still want to contribute.
An obstacle we did face this year was initially finding a building to store presents throughout the month of November while Wishlist items and “angel tree” presents came in. We do not have an official space for the program to utilize throughout the year, so taking additional donations of toys in the off-season is also difficult. We are so thankful to the Nam Knights who opened up their building to us for a month so that we could have extra time to sort the massive amount of toys that were donated. We will be on the lookout for a new space to use for November/December 2026, so please if there are any suggestions or you know of space available, please let us know!
Another obstacle continues to be receiving gifts back by the due date as well as tags being separated from presents when we collect them from the various locations, so if you have any suggestions on how to better control that next year, we are very open to ideas on how to be more efficient.
We will continue taking donations towards next year’s $10,000 goal. Donations can be taken to the Cameron County Chamber of Commerce (message for more details about Venmo donations). If you have any suggestions, concerns, or questions, please reach out via email at ccgiftprogram@gmail.com or via our Facebook page, Cameron County Christmas Gift Program.
We now would like to specifically list those who have contributed financially to the program. This list may not be exhaustive, so please if I missed someone, do not hesitate to reach out. Also of course we cannot name all who purchase gifts from the wishlists, but we appreciate you more than you will ever know. The kids were so blessed this year!
American Legion ,VFW & VFW Auxiliary ,Wabtec, Fox’s Pizza ,JSH ,Rick Olivett, Caldwell Corporation ,Straub Insurance ,Judd Schager, Emporium Rotary Club ,Bill Moscato ,Emporium Food Mart ,Bunny McLean (as well as Don Perry for being our hot dog grillers), Emporium Country Club, Mountain Laurel FCU ,Ken Gerg, Leo Smith, Nam Knights, Christabelle Club ,Knights of Columbus, Judy Erskine ,The Spot, The Streichs ,Edward Roberts, ABATE ,Michael Hart ,Anonymous Donor ,Deb Dunkle, Nancy Zoschg ,The Summersons, Laura Greene
Special shoutout to all the locations throughout town who displayed our wishlist tags and collected gifts: Emporium Food Mart, Northwest Savings Bank, C&N Bank, Mountain Laurel FCU, Emporium Post Office, Cameron County Courthouse, Emporium CMA, St. Mark’s, and Wabtec.
We hope everyone has an amazing Christmas and holiday season!
We look forward to seeing what comes in the New Year!
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