NFA Students Give Back For The Holidays

By Chuck Stewart, Jr.

(Newburgh) - “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” goes one Christmas song. However, there are some in the community who wouldn’t feel that way if it weren’t for the students at Newburgh Free Academy (NFA).

Karen Stafford, a fashion teacher in the Liberal Arts & Applied Science House of NFA, came up with the idea of creating Christmas stockings for the less fortunate in the community. She recruited hundreds of students who began working on the project in November. They raised over $600 for the supplies they would need to create the stockings and the gifts to go with them.
Each home room participated by adopting a stocking and making sure it was filled with the requested items, which included gift cards to Target, Wall-Mart, or the Newburgh Mall. Barry Cosmetics donated products for the stockings as well. In the end, the students had created 150 Christmas stockings.

Stafford and the NFA students would need a home for the stockings, so they called upon Safe Homes and Elant to create a holiday partnership.

Safe Homes of Orange County works to eliminate all forms of domestic violence through education, outreach, and provision of services to individuals and families affected and displaced by domestic abuse. “This can be an especially difficult time of year for those affected by domestic violence,” said Eunice Cunha of Safe Homes.

“While the smaller children and adults usually receive Christmas donations, the teenagers are often over-looked,” Cunha said. That’s where the partnership became obvious to Stafford. “Who knows better than teenagers what other teenagers want,” Stafford said. “It’s perfect.”
But the students didn’t want to stop there. So they reached out to the seniors at Elant in the Town of Newburgh. Elant provides quality care and lifestyle options to persons of diverse generations, cultures and needs, with a special emphasis on the elderly and their lifestyles. As the students would learn, if it weren’t for their Christmas stockings, some residents wouldn’t receive a holiday gift at all.

“The students worked so hard on this project,” Stafford said. “They gave their time and money to make other people’s holiday brighter.”

Pictured Above: Mollie DeMeio, Ebony Sumner, Amy Lau, Eunice Cunha of Safe Homes, Cindy Castro, Kristin Principato, and NFA fashion teacher Karen Stafford.

Pictured to the Right: NFA students handed out Christmas stocking to Elant Residents for the holidays.