Service project delivers birthday packages to needy children

Published: 2006-04-18

WEST CHICAGO, Ill.(CNS) -- Nine-year-old Mira sat by the window waiting for her special gift to arrive. Then a driver stopped in front of her residence and carted a 25-pound box to the door. The box was marked, "Happy Birthday, Mira, from your friends at the Children's Birthday Project." Inside was a "party in a box" -- Disney-princess-themed paper plates, napkins, cups, hats and cake decorations to make her day special. The birthday box also contained stuffed animals, notebooks and pens carefully placed over neatly wrapped and beribboned gifts. The package came courtesy of the Humanitarian Service Project in West Chicago, which runs the birthday outreach. "We want to give them that gift of love. It's really God's love and we're just vessels," Karole Kettering, the project's founder and executive director, told the Catholic Explorer, newspaper of the Joliet Diocese. Local Catholic parishioners and students from local Catholic schools are among the many volunteers who help with the organization's outreach to poor families throughout the year.

Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .