It’s the time for holiday heroes; they keep the gifts, smiles coming

SPECIAL DELIVERY: Volunteer Julie Silva delivers bags from a truckload of toys to the 2014 Holiday Drive at Children's Friend in Providence. / COURTESY CHILDREN'S FRIEND
SPECIAL DELIVERY: Volunteer Julie Silva delivers bags from a truckload of toys to the 2014 Holiday Drive at Children's Friend in Providence. / COURTESY CHILDREN'S FRIEND

Businesses big and small across the Ocean State each year find ways to help those less fortunate during the holidays.

From CVS Health Corp., which has been supporting the Woonsocket Adopt-A-Family program for more than 10 years, to Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island and Amica Mutual Insurance, which this year joined forces with a “Gobble Games” contest and collected more than 21,000 canned goods for the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, corporations can be counted on to pitch in.

So, too, do small firms and nonprofits, organizers say. Since 2009, Randall Realtors of Charlestown has hosted different fundraising and gift-giving activities for the Pawcatuck Neighborhood Center and the Domestic Violence Resource Center of South County. And the Aquidneck Island All Vets Club, a Middletown-based nonprofit and the home of the Viking Riders motorcycle club, has delivered toys for years to needy families at Christmas.

For the companies and nonprofits, meeting a community need has both social and economic benefits.

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“There is that strong motive to contribute to a better society,” said Carmen Perez, director of evaluation and data insight for New York-based CECP, a coalition of CEOs focused on societal engagement as a measure of business performance. “And the reason behind it is, [top executives] think of it as an investment: Their brand will benefit; the customers will respond.”

While some of these companies occasionally get much-deserved media attention for their efforts, the secret Santas tasked with carrying out the projects rarely get – or seek – notice.

Why do they do it?

Below are the stories of seven behind-the-scenes organizers. They represent hundreds of others just like them working without fanfare across the region each holiday season to ensure families get canned goods, toys, hot meals, gift cards and even parties they might otherwise go without.

HASBRO’S ‘NORTH POLE’

For two employees at the Pawtucket-based toy company Hasbro Inc., which adopts “the North Pole” moniker this time of year, childhood memories of giving and receiving fuel their philanthropic efforts.

At age 6, Maggie Casey received tap shoes from her mother for Christmas, not knowing they really came from the Salvation Army. Casey, 34, of Warwick, is a manager in the company’s office of global philanthropy and social impact.

“My family is mostly ministers, so we were always taught to take care of others,” Casey recalled. “As I got older, I always had my own job and paid my own way. But I realized it’s so important to help people, because I was helped.”

The Hasbro holiday program Casey oversees is about empowering parents to help them give their children gifts.

“I realize now what I’m doing for these parents is what somebody did for my mom when I was a child,” said Casey, who grew up in East Providence. “And I know how important that is.”

Casey runs Hasbro’s Gift of Play product donation program, through which 500,000 toys and games are donated globally during the holidays alone. A Rhode Island partner is Toys for Tots R.I., but Casey works also with the national Toys for Tots organization, as well as Hasbro Children’s Hospital and five other “strategic partners,” Casey said.

Casey’s job is to “fill in the age gaps” and provide toys that the community might not have provided enough of, she said.

“We will step in and make sure no child goes without,” Casey said. By late November, the number of toys matched to children in need in Rhode Island alone this year approached 15,000, she said.

Kevin Colman, 26, of North Providence, is a manager who has organized Hasbro’s Global Day of Joy since 2013.

That day is a paid day of corporate community service – it was Dec. 15 this year – when most of Hasbro’s 5,000-plus employees worldwide volunteer in the community for children.

“His work on Global Day of Joy literally starts the moment after the previous one ends,” said Brandon Keough, a Hasbro spokesman. “He serves as the point person for project leaders from all over the globe and is available to field all their questions at all times of day or night. There are no time zones in the North Pole.”

For Colman, delivering Meals on Wheels with his grandparents at age 5 led him indirectly to the work he does.

“It made me feel good that I was able to do something to make a difference in someone else’s life,” he said.

He graduated from the University of Rhode Island with a degree in communications and public relations and a minor in leadership studies. He worked briefly in fundraising at Hasbro Children’s Hospital before joining Hasbro Inc.

“I knew I wanted a job where I could give back,” he said.

WELL-OILED MACHINE

Giving trees are ubiquitous during the holidays, but at Providence-based Bank Rhode Island, organizing 19 of them at its branches to help out 13 different nonprofits is overseen by one woman: Patricia O’Donnell Saracino.

Saracino, the bank’s vice president in community relations, has been guiding the effort since she started at the bank 14 years ago. With 665 gifts gathered under these trees in 2013, the number climbed in 2014 to more than 1,000, she said. And although more than 3,000 gifts have been supplied since 2011, she added, many more have been given since the program started 18 years ago.

Originally in human resources, Saracino viewed her job change when she joined BankRI as an opportunity to give back on a wider level than she had previously.

“I am a lover of children,” she said. “If we can provide the smallest amount of joy for a child or take the stress or burden off a parent trying to provide holiday gifts for their children during tough economic times, that’s reason enough to continue the program.”

Saracino begins coordinating with branch managers in August, who connect with the nonprofits, which in turn create wish lists for families and children.

Mark J. Meiklejohn, bank president and CEO, said Saracino has helped firmly establish what has become a tradition. Besides the compassion she exhibits, a trait emulated by her fellow employees, she is highly organized and a “consummate team player,” he said in an email.

Urgency also brings out compassion in Saracino and her colleagues.

“We had a family that fell on extremely hard times and I received a call from the nonprofit,” she recalled. “We were down to the absolute wire, and I had a colleague who overheard the conversation and took on [providing gifts for] the whole family – a mother and three children. She wanted to help.”

‘DAN THE MAN’

Dan Bannister, the marketing and outreach manager at the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority, has spearheaded food, coat and hat, and toy drives at the nonprofit for the past four years, pulling together diverse groups to make giving happen.

One of the recipients of RIPTA’s Stuff a Bus Food Drive, the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, this year took in 1,050 pounds of food and $400 in cash donations on Nov. 21, said Bannister and Lisa Rothman Black, the food bank’s chief philanthropy officer.

“They do it in partnership with I Heart Media,” said Rothman Black, “and to get that level of exposure has a ton of value to us, reminding people about the need. So it’s the combination of all that that makes a big difference.”

Known by his co-workers and friends as “Dan the Man,” Bannister, 38, of Cumberland, said he’s “a planner,” but credits brainstorming with his former supervisor, Charles Odimgbe, and a fellow co-worker about launching a food drive to “give back” as the way these drives got started.

Having worked at radio stations in marketing, Bannister moved to RIPTA because he wanted to put his innate compassion to work, he said.

“RIPTA is people’s lifeline, getting them to work, medical appointments and grocery stores,” he said. “I figured I could help by marketing it better.”

Bannister remembers giving a friend his King Cobra G.I. Joe at age 10 when the friend hadn’t received one for Christmas.

“I said, ‘Well, you can have mine,’ ” he recalled. ” ‘I can get another one.’ ”

At RIPTA, Bannister started the food drive, modeled on common fundraising approaches that involve loading a bus with canned goods. He also created a toy drive to supplement the work of Toys for Tots R.I. in 2012, and a coat and hat drive with the Providence Bruins in 2013.

In 2014, he organized a toy drive for Toys for Tots R.I., as well as a Teddy Bear Toss and toy drive in which Providence Friars hockey fans toss teddy bears onto the ice at a game and the toys are given as donations at the West End Community Center.

According to Barbara Polichetti, director of public affairs for RIPTA, a quasi-state agency, Bannister’s work helps elevate RIPTA’s profile while also helping the community.

“Giving and being part of the community we serve is an agency mentality here because we’re in the community so much,” she said.

FATHER-DAUGHTER LEGACY

Julie Silva’s late father, Joseph, started a toy drive more than 20 years ago through the East Providence Knights of Columbus that, for most of that time, has benefited Children’s Friend.

Carrying on that effort as a volunteer by establishing a new foundation in her father’s name, Silva selflessly takes on a task the child-welfare nonprofit doesn’t have the staff to do on its own, says Stacy Couto, Children’s Friend vice president for external affairs.

“It helps us reach our goal every year,” said Couto. “And Joe just loved children and just wanted kids to have a good holiday, so it’s a great legacy.”

Initially, Joseph Silva mostly used word-of-mouth to solicit donations. His daughter today has gone from stuffing envelopes to using social media and a website to help get the word out.

In the first year with Children’s Friend, Julie Silva and her father, who passed away in 2013, collected about 125 toys. “Every year it grew,” Julie Silva said. “The year he died it was over 600 [toys]. It’s at 1,000 now.”

When Children’s Friend employees attended his wake, Julie Silva promised to carry on the tradition.

“I used to tell him, ‘You’d better live forever; I’ve got my own charities,’ ” she recalled, “[But] at the wake, as they were walking through, I looked at one of them and said, ‘Don’t worry; we’re going to continue the toy drive.’ It just came over me. I attribute it to him. He always knew how to get his way, so he had to have some hand in that.”

Couto estimates the toy drive has benefited more than 100 families each year for the past three years.

“We always have far more families than we can match,” she said.

GIVING BACK

Every two years for nearly a decade, Providence-based Textron Inc.’s year-round employee-engagement group, Textron Teammates, has adopted a group home for the holidays.

Diane Grenon, 59, of Lincoln, a Textron human resources representative and 16-year company veteran, is the organizer. And giving, for her, has deep roots.

“In my teens … [in] the Catholic Youth Organization, we always went Christmas caroling and brought gifts to people who weren’t well off,” she recalled. “One year, we went to the house of someone I knew, and I thought, ‘Gosh. I never even knew the situation they were in.’ After that, I made an effort to give back.”

This year, a new group of eight girls ages 12-17 served by Family Services of Rhode Island are being adopted; it’s the second consecutive year for the nonprofit, Grenon said.

While the number of youths receiving two to three gifts each anonymously is small, those gifts coming in from Textron employees who snatch tags from a number of giving trees located on different floors at the company include everything from basic necessities to Wii gaming consoles, the iPod Shuffle and nail kits, Grenon said.

Switching careers from being a logistics planner for the American Heart Association to her current role in human resources came as her daughter studied the subject at Bryant University and encouraged her mother to make a change more in line with her caring nature, Grenon said.

She switched careers at age 36, and led the holiday-giving efforts at Textron as a way to give back.

At Textron, Grenon works with the coordinator of the nonprofit site that is selected, collects wish lists, makes up tags for the giving trees, makes sure they are returned by a fixed deadline, stores the gifts, and may wrap them if a nonprofit requests that. She also helps deliver the gifts.

“Just seeing the looks on the faces of these moms and kids moved me enough to want to do something every year to make sure they had a Christmas that the kids deserved,” Grenon said.

SOMETHING MEANINGFUL

Making an impact on a large number of people by organizing holiday parties and gift giving is an art Pat Campellone, of Crossroads Rhode Island, excels at.

Campellone, director of special events, public relations and outreach for the housing and social-services nonprofit, has been organizing the hot meals and gift giving, which may include a Santa when children are involved, since 2012.

For her, giving became a habit at an early age, she said.

“I remember visiting St. Mary’s Home for Children in North Providence,” as a youngster, she recalled. “That was an awakening: to see children who not only didn’t have parents but didn’t have anything. It raised my level of consciousness to know I was pretty lucky and other people weren’t.”

Campellone, who lives in Lincoln, worked at Duffy & Shanley in Providence as a vice president and account supervisor before coming, just shy of age 60, to Crossroads in 2012.

“It seemed like there should be more to work than just meeting the deadline for an ad for next week,” she recalled. “I was getting a little older and just wanted to do something more meaningful.”

The numbers of people affected by the parties and gift-giving Campellone organizes are substantial. One corporate sponsor each year takes on the event for 50 shelter families; another has hosted 50 women in the women’s shelter for a decade; the Crossroads board of directors hosts a hot meal for about 100 day program participants; and a third sponsor over five years has helped about half the 176 people living in permanent supportive Crossroads housing.

Karen Santilli, Crossroads president and CEO, says Campellone manages the relationships with corporate sponsors creatively.

“[Campellone] has a passion for our mission, but she is an events and public relations person, so she understands how to keep things fresh,” she said.

“The reality is, the individuals giving, or the companies giving parties, are doing it because they really want to help,” Campellone said. “It makes them feel good and they receive more than they give, so we don’t really have to persuade them.” •

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