The True Meaning of Christmas: Giving Back to Our Community
By Valerie Larios
For some families, Christmas morning comes without presents or even a warm meal. Our South Gate community is trying to change that by giving back to the community and offering support through various donation opportunities.
Spreading kindness is important especially during the holiday season. For our school that means either helping a child or family, providing food, and much more.
Our school principal, Leo Gonzalez, is a strong advocate in our community and participates a lot to help those in need. Gonzalez works with the parent center and coordinators to find families who might need extra support or a helping hand.
“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.”
Any student in need of extra assistance is welcomed to visit the Parent Center. The staff there will contact the parents of the student in order to receive further guidance on how to best support their family, whether its donating food or connecting with other organizations.
Furthermore, places such as Northgate have provided have provided warm meals for families and even gift cards, not just during Thanksgiving, but throughout the Christmas season as well.
“Its not all about food,” Gonzalez says, “there’s many organizations who visit nursing homes, go caroling, and drop off small gifts such as crafts.”
Through churches, small businesses, or school clubs, theres always an opportunity for students to help within our community.
Ms. Agustin’s classroom Christmas tree adorned with student-made ornaments.
Photo Courtesy of Brynn Kan.
The school’s newsletter, which can be accessed on Schoology, is the main source of information that students can look at and see where help is needed.
Additionally, our school advocates for a lot of events on social media, which students can also tune into. Some of these Instagram accounts include @southgatehs and @sghsleadereship.
One of the most recently advertised events was at the Azalea Shooping Center, where the community hosted a tree lighting event in which they gave away gifts.
Gonzalez also shares that our police department hosts a toy drive and Leadership sometimes helps wrap gifts for LAPD. For the 75th day of school, South Gate invited students to drop toys off at S-1 which went towards elementary students. Some of these gifts were recently donated to a toy drive at Willow Elementary School.
Ultimately, holidays are more than just the number of gifts we receive. Holidays bring us together as a community and as a family. With our school’s pride and urgency to help, we can uplift others and be a helping hand to those in need.