BERLIN – A year after losing its long-time home, Santa House, the charity known for its generosity to local children during the holiday season, is still struggling to find a permanent location.
Volunteers are pictured loading bikes on Monday morning that were donated to the Santa House beyond this year’s deadline and will be given away next year to a needy family. Photos by Charlene Sharpe
Like they did last year, Santa House volunteers ended the Christmas season by carting boxes and boxes of supplies and gifts for next year into trucks and hauling them to storage in Snow Hill. Although Atlantic General Hospital provided the charity with space to use this fall so its annual Christmas gift program could continue, the arrangement was temporary.
“We’re still looking,” said Dena Holloway, president of Santa House. “Keep us in your thoughts.”
For more than a decade, Santa House operated out of space donated by Worcester County. Early in 2014, however, the county reclaimed the space for its Department of Liquor Control. The charity, which was founded through the Worcester County Sheriff’s Department more than 20 years ago, has been searching for a location since then.
Holloway said the struggle has been finding a spot that’s both large enough to house the operation and available on more than just a temporary basis.
Santa House was only able to provide needy families with gifts this year because of a last-minute arrangement with Atlantic General. The hospital allowed the organization to use the building set aside for its new Atlantic General Medical Center in West Ocean City.
“It was an easy decision for us to donate space to Santa House,” said Kim Justice, vice president of planning and operations for AGH. “When we put together our timelines for construction and occupancy and realized we would have this space just sitting there through the fall, we thought why not put it to good use?”
The offer came at just the right time, as Holloway said that if her group hadn’t found space by September they wouldn’t have had time to collect and organize donated items in time to distribute them for Christmas. Even with four months, the group still wasn’t able to provide gifts to quite as many families as it normally did.
“We gave to 425 families this year,” Holloway said. “In the past we’ve done more but we were crunched on time.”
She explained that the roughly 100-member group got lists of families who might need help during the holidays from local schools. Once they have the lists, volunteers cross reference them to make sure they’re not helping the same families other volunteer groups are. They then interview family members to find out what they need, whether it’s clothes, toys or food.
“We do our best to provide what we can,” Holloway said.
Because the organization doesn’t have a permanent location, this year volunteers set up four new gift-giving sites. Families were
Various donation boxes spread out through the community were packed up and loaded away from the Santa House’s temporary location on Monday morning.
able to meet up with Santa House volunteers at the Ocean City Police Department, the Showell Fire Department, the Snow Hill Lions Club and the Pocomoke Fairgrounds to pick up their presents.
“That made it more convenient,” Holloway said. “Nobody had to go too far.”
She says whether it finds a permanent location or not the Santa House will continue that practice in the future.
In the meantime, Holloway and her fellow volunteers will keep looking for space to set up shop. When asked why Santa House was an organization worth keeping in the community, Holloway pointed out the hundreds of families it had helped this year.
“If we had a permanent home, we could be open year-round,” she said.