It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and Random Acts is celebrating in style! This holiday season, each staff member had $150 to put towards an #RAHolidayKindness act of their choice. Although we encourage spreading kindness all year long, the holiday season is an extra special time to focus on sharing our love, time, and resources with others. We had so much fun making holiday magic happen. It only makes sense to spread the cheer with a blog series telling you all about our staff holiday acts! Let’s see what the Random Acts elves have been up to…
Staff Writer Dreana Ferguson decided to focus her #RAHolidayKindness love on Mercy House of the Southern Tier, a local nonprofit hospice home. Mercy House aims to provide its terminally ill residents and their families with a comfortable, home-like environment. In addition to 24-hour care, residents also enjoy private bedrooms with cable TV and phones, home-cooked meals, a library, a shared lounge area with a peaceful waterfall, a chapel, a kitchen that visitors can use too, and open visiting hours for friends and family. The staff is caring, empathetic, and respectful of everyone they come in contact with, which makes the situation feel less overwhelming for residents and family members. Since Mercy House does not turn away anyone who is unable to pay for their care, donations play a critical role in keeping the hospice home up and running.
This holiday season, Dreana wanted to help out Mercy House itself, the current residents, and the residents’ families. To do this, she split her holiday act into two parts: donation collection and crafting.
Donation Collection
The week of December 14-21, she collected donations from Mercy House’s current wishlist. These practical items included things like cleaning supplies, shelf-stable foods for the kitchen, and medical care supplies for the residents. With the combined efforts of friends, family, community members, and some of her funding from Random Acts, Dreana was able to collect nearly everything off of the wishlist!
Crafting Kindness
Dreana spent the rest of her #RAHolidayKindness budget on fleece- lots and lots of it. On December 21, she hosted a Crafting Kindness party at her house. Friends gathered together to make no-sew fleece blankets and to personalize Christmas cards for each Mercy House resident. Mercy House can home ten residents at a time, and the crafting team was able to create twelve fleece blankets- one for each room and a couple extra to spare! Each blanket was bundled up with a personalized card wishing the recipient and their family happy holidays. Then, the collected donations and blankets were delivered to Mercy House on December 23, so that residents could enjoy their gifts on Christmas.
It is our hope that the blankets will warm the residents’ bodies now and warm their loved ones’ hearts later. We wish Mercy House a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
