Snoqualmie Giving Tree sees highest number of families yet

“There’s a lot of families that are really struggling this year,” Debby Peterman said.

By Grace Gorenflo • December 23, 2024 9:22 am

The 2024 Kiwanis Giving Tree program provided holiday gifts to more than 600 children in the Snoqualmie Valley, making it the program’s biggest year to date.

Kiwanis doesn’t have a final count on participants, but the estimate is around 675 kids, said Debby Peterman, a local who’s been involved in the Giving Tree program for some 15 years. The 2024 program had about 80 donation sites at various Snoqualmie Valley businesses and organizations. In addition to the gifts, Rotary purchased more than 200 new coats for families to take as needed, and the nonprofit Feed Kiddos handed out more than 600 snack bags for kids.

“It was pretty scary for us because we’ve never had that many before, but in talking to the folks at the [Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank], they just said, there’s a lot of families that are really struggling this year,” Peterman said.

Around Thanksgiving, each business or organization that signs up to be a Giving Tree host gets 50-100 tags to hang on their tree, each listing the age and sex of a child. Community members take tags off the tree, purchase appropriate gifts and return them wrapped. Volunteers collect all the gifts from the various locations and set up a “store” for registered families to pick out gifts for their children.

Families in need can sign up for Giving Tree through the Snoqualmie Valley Food Bank. Each family is assigned a shopping time and given a number of gifts depending on how many kids they have. This year, the shopping experience was set up at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in North Bend.

Snoqualmie Valley Kiwanis partners with the Mount Si High School Key Club — a Kiwanis-sponsored student organization that focuses on service projects — to facilitate Giving Tree. This year, Kiwanis also had help from students from Two Rivers School.

Mount Si Key Club advisor Joe Dockery said Giving Tree is an incredibly impactful program for his students.

“Getting to collect and organize thousands of gifts helps to drive home both how many kids in our Valley need support and how generous our community can be,” he said. “Plus, [the students] get that sense of giving back to the community which always puts them in the holiday spirit.”

He also noted that “the people that run the Giving Tree program are some of the warmest people I know and make sure the Key Club helpers feel appreciated.”

Peterman said the success of Giving Tree can be attributed to the generous donations of gifts, money and time from the community and the program’s volunteers. After weeks of coordination, volunteers spent 12 hours on Dec. 17 and 4 hours on Dec. 18 assisting shoppers — six every 20 minutes.

It’s a lot of work, Peterman said the day after, but as much as she was tired, she was also fulfilled.

“[Volunteers] told me that they’ve had shoppers come through in tears and people saying to them, ‘I would not have a Christmas without this,’” she said. “It really makes you feel like you are making a difference and you’re helping a lot of people.”