Dear Santa Project
The following letter was written on behalf of the 2004 officers of the Student Society of Architectural Engineers, Tracey Nawrocki, Nate Patrick, Matt Carr, Tony Nicastro, Abbey Beresik, Abe Vogel, Mike Lombardi, and Alex Kosis, to thank all of the faculty, staff and students who participated in this year’s Dear Santa Project.
Greetings Secret Santas,
Thanks to your kindness, this year's AE Department/Second Mile Dear Santa project was a HUGE success. Not only were all of the wish-list items received, but there were donations left over to purchase supermarket gift cards for each of the families!
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We were overwhelmed by the magnitude of your support: some of you traveled towns away from State College to acquire items you wanted to make extra-special, some of you ordered items online when stores were out-of-stock, some of you pulled together donations from members of your organizations to buy larger items, and some of you individually made extraordinary purchases.
No matter what the case, all of the gifts and cash donations were out-of-this-world!
Thanks to the generosity of various students, student organizations, faculty, and staff members from the AE, ARCH, and LARCH departments, the children and parents of the three selected State College families will have the coats, shoes, and clothes they need, as well as some impressive toys and gadgets. The cash donations were used to purchase the items on the tags that remained on the board (shown above), as well as the supermarket gift cards.
After the gift-wrapping party, it was very exciting to see that each child was going to have a good stack of presents to open on Christmas morning! There were a few nice gifts for each of the moms and dads, too.
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Shopping for items such as boots, undershirts, and pants for members of each family reminded us of how fortunate we are to be able to help others in need around the holidays--and all year long. Pulling together as a department to bring Christmas to our neighbors (who might not have a Christmas otherwise) demonstrates how we as AEs are a strong part of the community, and how we as a group can better society in areas beyond what we do in our major and profession.
Santa does exist.
Thank you again!