The winter season’s arrival in December means gifts for some, trips home for others, and organizing the annual Holiday Gift and Food Drive for the Community Engagement Programs and Partnerships (CEPP). This year, CEPP partnered with the Shaw-Taylor Elementary School to give gifts to students experiencing homelessness, the Department of Children and Families (DCF) to provide food and grocery cards, and Brookview House, a shelter for homeless families, to enrich the holidays for those families’ children. In total, Milton Academy gave gifts to 137 kids total around greater Boston.
The drive, announced on November 11 with a deadline of December 5, comes during a time when “people around [the kids] are wishing for gifts and receiving gifts,” said CEPP Director Andrea Geyling-Moore. As a result, according to CEPP Board Member Margot Murphy-Hara ‘28, “the holidays [are]… often when a lack of resources can become very starkly visible.” Milton’s Holiday Drive aims to ensure that kids, no matter their socioeconomic status, can “celebrate this special time in their own way,” continued Murphy-Hara. Timothy Bae ‘29 shared a similar sentiment, commenting that no one should “have to choose between gifts and paying the bills, while [Milton students] choose between swim team and ski team.” However, Class of 2028 Dean and Science Teacher Joanna Latham pointed out that “the need doesn't just come at… the holiday season,” adding that she “[wished the drive] wasn’t just one time a year.”
Contributions to the drive included two pathways: either donating using one’s IA or signing up as an advisory, individual, or family to get a gift for the Shaw-Taylor School, the DCF, or the Brookview House. Money collected from IA donations purchased groceries for food boxes for the DCF. At the same time, advisories signed up to pool money and buy something on a child’s wish list, which ranged from Target gift cards to Spiderman comic books.
For Latham, signing up for the gift drive was exciting because “[her advisees] love the idea of giving to these communities…something from the advisory group.” Likewise, Music Teacher Eric Goode’s advisory was also “pretty excited about [the drive]” and got “really engaged with it” by making cards and notes for the children receiving the gifts. Murphy-Hara commented that she believed this way of contribution enabled students to “share the responsibility and work together.”
However, even after several weeks, Milton Academy has not yet reached the CEPP’s goal of $4,000 for the food boxes. Kamali Reddy ‘29 explained that she did not donate because she “didn't ask [her] parents prior” and did not want to proceed without their permission. Reddy argued that the IA donations were not accessible to all students, suggesting instead that “other things such as… making a card… would be more successful in a large amount.” On the other hand, Bae, who contributed via his advisory but not through monetary donations, explained that he simply did not “have much time to go see what was going on, and by the time [he] had time, the school day had already ended.” Bae also noted that boarders, in particular, might “find it difficult to get things for people.”
Murphy-Hara also proposed that people may refrain from contributing, because “some people don’t see… that their donation adds up to a large impact.” Another CEPP Board Member, Aava Darvish ‘27, reflected that “one thing that we can do better is demonstrate [the] impact that [the drive] makes.” Despite such hurdles, over 50 advisories signed up to buy a child’s gift. As one of the participants, Bae said, “[It is] a great thing to do that I’d willingly do again next year.”
Looking forward, Geyling-Moore hopes the drive will “become something that other people just know about.” Already, awareness about the event has spread through the CEPP Office’s Instagram account as well as their Schoology page. According to Goode, this winter was “the first year that it was really on [his] radar,” as he recalled “getting more emails this year about it” than in previous years.
While the Gift Drive primarily focuses on “[helping] out in a small way to make a child happy” according to Geyling-Moore, Darvish remarked that it can also serve as a way for Milton students to “reach out of the Milton bubble and help… different communities.” Bae found the drive “eye-opening… to our well-off situation at Milton.” Since its initiation around 30 years ago, the Holiday Gift and Food Drive—in addition to helping over 100 children—is, for Darvish, a way to ensure that “everyone is able to contribute to not only our Milton community, but [also] the communities that Milton is a part of.”