Hallmark Employees Bring Joy to Nearly 250 Kansas City-Area Children
During the 2020 holiday season, Hallmark employees stepped up, for the fifth year in a row, to support Operation Joy, a program with Operation Breakthrough to help children in the Kansas City area have a happy holiday. Even though the process was different because most employees worked from home, they still formed 90 teams and adopted 247 children from 94 families. Each team provided four to six gifts for each child in the family, money for the family’s holiday meal and a gift card for the caregiver of each family.
“Hallmark was honored to support Operation Breakthrough and its mission to provide a safe, loving and educational foundation to over 650 children and parents living in poverty in the urban core,” said Amy Winterscheidt, Hallmark’s community involvement director. “Providing a holiday for these families allowed them to focus on their essential needs and create warm holiday memories as a family.”
Hallmark’s teams coordinated their purchases for their families virtually and created and fulfilled digital wish lists. The Hallmark planning committee created a socially distanced, outdoor drop-off at a loading dock at Hallmark headquarters that was available over the course of three days for teams to leave their donations. ♦