A real good-neighbor policy

Township couple reaches out to help the less fortunate

by Sean Ruppert, Staff Writer
   It has been said that it takes a village to raise a child.
   Well sometimes, it takes a community to make sure every child has a merry Christmas.
   Working with the South Brunswick Social Services’ Holiday Program, one township woman has organized an annual effort to collect Christmas gifts for children of needy families.
   Dianne Johnston and her husband, Jim, have been South Brunswick residents for 15 years, and for the last 10 have collected gifts to donate to Social Services, which distributes the gifts to families with children in need.
   ”We have a Christmas party for all our friends at our home. People would bring gifts and different things for the party, and one year I realized that we have all this stuff, but there are a lot of people who do not,” Ms. Johnston said. “What we began to do is ask in our invitations that in lieu of a gift for us, people instead bring a gift for a needy child.”
   Social Services Director LouAnne Wolf says Ms. Johnston has been very generous.
   ”She is one in a million,” Ms. Wolf said. “If everyone had a heart like Dianne, no one in the township would ever lack for anything.”
   Ms. Johnston says she hopes that more people will begin to pay attention to this issue.
   ”It seems as though there are some people who think that we don’t have families in need here,” she said. “The truth is that they are everywhere, in every town.”
   Working with Ms. Wolf, Ms. Johnston now creates a list of specific items requested by the program’s children, and assigns her party guests a specific item.
   She says that the gifts are not extravagant, and are often requests for basic items like clothing. Ms. Johnston says she takes in enough items to give several Christmas presents to about 10 children a year, usually four to five families. In addition Mr. Johnston’s company, PMK, also provides presents for an additional family.
   She says that her friends and family took to the idea very quickly.
   ”Now I get people calling me before I even send out our party invitations wanting to know what they should buy for the kids,” Ms. Johnston said. “I have had people who donated thank me, because it makes them feel so good to help.”
   While Ms. Wolf describes the couple as one of her biggest donors, Ms. Johnston is quick to give the credit to the Social Services staff.
   ”They are so well-organized, I really want to put the emphasis on the work that they do,” she said. “They care so much about these families and the children, they are really wonderful.”
   According to Ms. Wolf, Social Services was able to provide gifts to 130 families with children. The department also provided them with a holiday meal that they could prepare including turkey and enough side dishes and fixings for a holiday dinner. An additional 50 single adults or couples without children received meals.
   Faced with a food shortage for the holiday meals last week, Ms. Wolf said the community responded by donating enough food to feed all the families who signed up for the program, describing the response as “crazy wonderful.”
   Anyone interested in donating food to the pantry can do so by bringing it to the Social Services Department, in the lower level of the municipal building on Ridge Road. Food not used for the holiday meal will go toward the South Brunswick Food Pantry’s regular monthly distribution.
   For more information contact Ms. Wolf at (732) 329-4000 ext. 7674.