GREEN BAY – The Green Bay Metro Fire Departments’ Santa Claus is coming to town, or in this case, Brown County, to gather presents for the Gifts for Teens Program.
Many families in Brown County struggle to afford Christmas presents, and for the fourteenth year, the Green Bay Metro Fire Department will be gathering gifts for families so they can have a gift under the Christmas tree for their teenagers.
“It’s just another way in our profession to give back. When we see people it’s usually because of some devastation that happens, but this is a different end of helping,” said Firefighter and President of the Gifts for Teens Program Ben Peters.
It all started in 2011 when the firefighters had noticed that although there were many charities for young children’s Christmas gifts, the teenagers were often left out.
The fire department then started “passing the hat,”personally donating gifts for teens in the community.
Seeing the difference it made, they started doing parades and involving Santa to spread some joy and gather gift donations from the local neighborhoods.
This year’s parades will start on Dec. 1 and go on for eight nights, visiting a different neighborhood each evening from 6-7:30 p.m.
There will be ambulances leading the way and playing loud music, causing attention for people to come outside and see what’s happening.
“It’s always heartwarming doing our parade and seeing the kids’ reactions,” said Peters. “We’ve actually had the same family who’s made this a tradition with a camp fire and everything and haven’t missed a parade for many years with many items to donate which we were very grateful for.”
If people are unable to donate through the parade, they are also able to make monetary donations which the firefighters then use to shop and buy gifts for the teens.
“For our shopping we pair up with Meijer and several employees help us spend all the money we raised and find great gifts,” said Peters.
The donations and shopping usually include popular gifts among teens like sporting goods equipment, books and novels, beauty products, headphones, earbuds, fishing gear, hoodies and sweatshirts, etc.
Every year there are usually around 2,000 families/teenagers that are in need of this assistance.
Last year, the parades gathered 1,600 gifts.
“My personal goal is to exceed last year’s goal by being able to deliver more gifts than prior years, to make sure every teenager has something under the tree come Christmas morning. It’s about that 2000 number, and unfortunately it hasn’t been able to go down, but the gifts being donated are going up,” said Peters.
After all the gifts are collected, they will be delivered to the Salvation Army to organize and distribute to the families.
Visit the Green Bay Metro Fire Departments website for more information about the parade.
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