The Mitten Tree continues its tradition of giving

THUMBS-UP: The Mitten Tree stands at the entrance of the Market Place at USU and in 22 other locations around Cache Valley. The USU Women's Center started this yearly tradition and continues to organize it. New and handmade mittens, gloves and scarfs collected on the trees will be donated to the Bear River Head Start
program and the Child and Family Support Center. Items can be hung on the trees until Dec. 6 when they will be given to the centers. / Photo by Irene Gudmundson

By Kathryn Kemp

November 22, 2006 | For 18 years disadvantaged children in the community have stayed warm in winter with the help of a service project called The Mitten Tree.

Since 1988 the Utah State University Women's Center advisory board has donated mittens, gloves, scarves, hats, socks and other winter accessories to the Bear River Head Start Program, and later included the Child and Family Support Center in the project.

"This is a fundraiser that reaches the community," said Ann Bolling, a secretary at the Women's Center. It reaches the community in more ways than one. First, it provides these needed items for families, and especially children, in Cache Valley. But it also allows community members to get involved and help, even in this small way.

The Bear River Head Start program is one of the national head start programs developed by the Federal Government.

"They are child focused programs and have the overall goal of increasing the school readiness of young children in low-income families," according to the Administration for Children and Families.

The Child and Family Support Center is a non-profit organization that benefits Cache County specifically by providing services such as a children's shelter, a 24-hour hotline for parents, therapeutic services for victims of abuse, and a nursery for parents to drop off their children if they need to take a break.

The Mitten Tree is focused on providing these necessities for children who are involved in these two programs. It began in 1988 when members of the advisory board of the Women's Center were each asked to donate two items. It grew from those first 52 items to a single tree and donation box set up in the Taggart Student Center to having mitten trees all over the valley.

It grew because people outside the advisory board were so impressed that they also wanted to participate, said Bolling. Since then there have been thousands of items collected for the benefit of the children in these programs.

The advisory board will ask businesses in the community if they are willing to allow a tree and donation box to be set up, and this year the trees are in 23 places around Cache Valley.

"Businesses are so willing to do it," Bolling said.

Bolling said all the items will be collected and given to the two organizations to distribute before the children leave for Christmas vacation.

"This is a very simple way to help children," Bolling said.

Donations are accepted from Nov. 13 through Dec. 6 at locations such as the Marketplace in the TSC, the USU Community Credit Union, the Logan, North Logan and Smithfield Public Libraries, the Logan Golf and Country Club, Cache Valley Learning Center, and other various places around campus and the Valley.

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