By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
Christmas for a number of local families and their children will be a little brighter this year, thanks to Del Rioan Mary Mota and her “Christmas Around the World” sponsors and volunteers.
Mota is the coordinator of “Christmas Around the World,” an event she has organized for the past decade.
“It’s an event we hold every year for the children from Cardwell Elementary School and other schools and the shelter, where there are needy children. People will refer families to us, and these are families with children who would not have a Christmas without our help,” Mota said.
This year’s distribution event was held Sunday at the San Felipe Exes Center in the city’s historic San Felipe neighborhood.
Mota said once she obtains lists of needy families from schools and the shelter, she solicits sponsors from the community for each of the families.
“I have quite a few sponsors who assist with this event, and I also do fundraisers throughout the year to buy toys. This year, I had the help of the Del Rio Host Lions Club, where I’m the president, and I had eight Lions that volunteered to take a family. Most of our local banks like IBC, Texas Community Bank, take at least one family. The Bank and Trust took four families this year. County Judge Lewis Owens and the commissioners also help,” Mota said.
“My biggest sponsor is JesCo, a company that does cleaning and contract services,” she added.
Mota said in previous years she bought bicycles for the children of referred families, but this year she purchased gift cards instead.
“We serve anywhere from 20 to 25 families, and they include a total of 65 to 75 kids,” Mota said.
Each of the youngsters also received a meal from Martha Mendoza of Del Rio’s McDonald’s restaurants.
Mota explained why helping local families with children is important to her.
“It’s important to me because I retired from working for the school district after 20 years, where I worked as a parental aide, and what we did, we served the community, we served the parents, we served the needs of the children. I worked at Cardwell, so I got to see the need for this firsthand,” Mota said.
Mota said she works with the current parental aide at Cardwell to obtain the list of families.
A dedicated group of about 15 volunteers assists Mota in setting up each year’s distribution event.
This year, the group also did a coat drive, gifting one jacket to each of the 23 teachers at Cardwell to give out to a student in most need of one.
“I really enjoy doing this. I enjoy seeing the smiles on the faces of the children. I grew up like them, so to me, this touches my heart. This gives me joy. I love to do it,” Mota said.
“I want to say that I really appreciate what the community has done, and the biggest honor was over the past week, when the school district invited me to a reception, and they presented me with two certificates of appreciation for the work I’ve done with Christmas Around the World over the past 10 years,” she added.
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Contact the author at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com
