Episode Details

Superintendent:
Welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. For those of you listening who are already stressed out about holiday shopping and finding that perfect gift today, we have an idea that just might relieve some of that stress. How about doing something that amounts to the gift of giving back every year. The Jordan Education Foundation sponsors something called Christmas for Kids. It provides a free holiday shopping spree for Jordan School District students who might otherwise go without one single gift, a warm coat, boots, or simply some new socks over the holidays. Here to tell us about how you can get involved with Christmas for Kids and give the gift of your time volunteering is Jordan Education Foundation Director, Steve Hall, and Brian Simon, President and CEO of the South Jordan Chamber of Commerce. Gentlemen, thanks for joining us on the Supercast.

Steve:
Thank you, it's an honor.

Superintendent:
Steve, tell us a little bit about the Foundation. We're going to do a Supercast about just the Foundation, but this is one of the wonderful things the Foundation does. Tell us a little bit about it.

Steve:
Christmas for Kids is a program that we started because we know there are a lot of kids that won't have this Christmas opportunity. So six years ago, I think it was, we started with an idea. We were able to get 40 secondary middle school, high school students to come to Gordmans and get Christmas. We matched them up with some chaperones. That has grown up to this point and now we have this year, we're going to do at least 500 secondary middle school, high school students and give them Christmas.

Superintendent:
And how do you choose the students who will receive the opportunity to do this?  Go to the schools?

Steve:
The schools have counselors, administrators, teachers who know the students that need some extra help, that may be feeling alone. They may know a family situation where a family is having some particular struggles. They want to be like every other kid in the school, but maybe they don't have the right clothes and maybe they don't have the warm clothes and they're struggling. And it's the administrators, the counselors, and the teachers that know the students because they are professionals that really care about the kids. And as they walk, we've seen these teachers, counselors, principals dig into their own pockets to buy Christmas for Kids. And so we're trying to make sure everyone that's deserving gets Christmas.

Superintendent:
Mr. Simon, thanks for joining us. Tell us how you got involved in your history with Christmas for Kids.

Brian:
Actually, Steve and I got together and decided we want to do something with Gordmans as well to help with the Jordan School District. So we threw some ideas around and we decided on something similar to Shop with a Cop, but really blow it up. So we decided a little different with the middle and high school. The elementary age usually gets help a little bit more. We thought this was kind of an untapped resource where they don't get as much help. And we decided instead of just having police come in and chaperone or walk around the store for 15 minutes and then go to the checkout and go, we wanted to create an event that the entire community could be part of. So we've got city officials, police department, fire department, military, educators, business leaders that come