Portraits in generosity
Family photo, desk and chair, sleeping mats among readers' gifts to needy
By Pamela Martineau - Bee Staff Writer
Last Updated 12:37 am PST Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Does giving money to an area needy cause make a difference? For the 20th consecutive year, it did for the Book of Dreams project.
Thanks to recent donations to The Bee's annual holiday donation campaign, some lives are changing for the better throughout the region.
A little boy who suffered horribly in a catastrophic fire has a new child's desk and chair to sit at and write stories.
The homeless people who come to the Gathering Inn homeless shelter in Roseville have new sleeping mats.
And a disabled woman who lives in a nursing home is a bit less isolated while she uses a new laptop computer to e-mail others with multiple sclerosis.
The Book of Dreams continues to touch people's lives in the Sacramento region -- thanks to the generous support it has received from readers.
Donations to this year's project can be made at
www.sacbee.com/bookofdreams. Donations will be accepted until Jan. 13.
Already, volunteers have been able to use Book of Dreams donations to purchase some items requested by people featured in the Nov. 22 special section. But more donations are needed.
Some people who have benefited include Vo family members, whose lives were devastated by a fire in their native Vietnam. Now the Vos have a family portrait hanging on the wall in their tiny south Sacramento apartment.
That's all the struggling family asked for -- a family portrait to replace all those photos lost in the fire. But in the new photo, their mother, who died in the fire, is missing.
"Now it feels like home," Kiki Vo, 15, said of having a family portrait in the house.
At the Women's Empowerment program that operates on the Loaves & Fishes campus, Book of Dreams readers purchased craft items -- beads, fleece fabric, sculpting clay -- for the homeless women and their children to use to make gifts at the group's annual holiday party.
Erie Shockey, a Women's Empowerment program case manager, said her agency holds the party so the women, who often can't afford gifts for others, can make gifts and participate in the "dignity of giving."
"This will give the moms and kids a wonderful opportunity to thank people, friends and family whom they care about and want to give something back to," Shockey said.
Ten mothers who receive services from the Black Infant Health program in south Sacramento now have cribs for their newborn babies. Program workers have stressed to mothers that they need to keep babies safe in cribs, rather than adult beds. The new cribs will help 10 babies.
"We had to determine who out of our mothers would be the most in need," Zuri Colbert, a program outreach worker, said of how they distributed the cribs.
"One mother was sleeping on the couch with the baby. Now she can put her baby in a crib until she finds permanent housing," Colbert said.
Rest at:
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/94733.html 
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