{"id":64481,"date":"2025-12-18T18:13:38","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T18:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/64481\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T18:13:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T18:13:38","slug":"gift-drive-aims-to-bring-some-holiday-magic-to-children-at-kidspeace-northern-lehigh-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/64481\/","title":{"rendered":"Gift drive aims to bring some holiday magic to children at KidsPeace | Northern Lehigh County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>N. WHITEHALL TWP., PA. &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kidspeace.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">KidsPeace<\/a> is getting some extra help this season, with a little holiday magic powered by the community.<\/p>\n<p>69 News Reporter Sydney Kay has more on the local effort in Lehigh County that makes a difference for kids in their care.<\/p>\n<p>Gift wrap is a hot commodity inside the David Small Family Pavilion at KidsPeace in Orefield.<\/p>\n<p>These aren&#8217;t the busy working hands of elves; they\u2019re volunteers donating their time to help make this season special for kids.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a way, I think, of the community understanding how much they have a role to play in making sure our kids are taken care of,\u201d said Bob Martin, the Director of Communications\/Engagement at KidsPeace.<\/p>\n<p>KidsPeace has been around for more than 140 years providing mental and behavioral health services to children.<\/p>\n<p>Through the nonprofit\u2019s Angels Program, they\u2019ve collected more than 1,000 gifts specifically for children at their facilities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s nice that we\u2019re able to make that happen for these kids and they feel seen and they really have the dignity of receiving gifts that were thought of and specifically picked for them,\u201d said Elizabeth Ruggiero, the Director of Development at KidsPeace.<\/p>\n<p>Donated by local sponsors, anything from toys, clothing, and hygiene items fill the inside of the pavilion. It\u2019s an event that takes months of planning.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust sorting these gifts and making sure they get to the right kid is probably the biggest aspect of this and so we\u2019re incredibly grateful for the well-oiled machine that is here at KidsPeace,\u201d said Ruggiero.<\/p>\n<p>The elbow grease of wrapping marks the homestretch of the holiday surprise and gives hope for the children in their treatment programs to wake up to something magical and to focus on just being a kid.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re struggling with some mental health issues, they\u2019re working through trying to build their resiliency, and it\u2019s also the holidays and they\u2019re not with their family so having these gifts with their names on Christmas morning makes all the difference,\u201d said Paige Keeter, the Senior Program Director at KidsPeace.<\/p>\n<p>KidsPeace officials tell us this event grows every year through community support. They say it represents how their work is helping end the stigma surrounding mental health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"N. WHITEHALL TWP., PA. &#8211; KidsPeace is getting some extra help this season, with a little holiday magic&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,27750,3705],"class_list":{"0":"post-64481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-_homepage_top_stories","9":"tag-allentown","10":"tag-allentown-headlines","11":"tag-allentown-news","12":"tag-northern-lehigh-county","13":"tag-sunrise"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}