From Vibrance Health
Vibrance Health is so proud to announce their largest Christmas giving project – A Vibrance Christmas – provided 27 patient families in Matagorda and Wharton Counties with a complete Christmas including decorations, a traditional Christmas dinner and gifts for the whole family.
This gift to Vibrance Health patients was provided 100% by the generosity of its staff members and one big-hearted community donor.
“We know this has been an especially difficult year for most everyone financially,” said Vibrance Health CEO Celeste Harrison.
“Some of our patients tend to have an especially hard time just providing basic needs throughout the year.”
“We knew that this Christmas was going to be a very difficult time for some.”
Although, this wasn’t the first time Vibrance Health, formerly known as MEHOP, has provided Christmas gifts for patients, this was the first year, that they tried to provide the three most traditional hallmarks of a Christmas celebration – the beautiful decorations, the delicious food and gifts for every member of the family.
In years past, Vibrance Health collected toys to give to their pediatric patients that were in need.
The toys were collected in donations from staff and then dispersed to nominated patients based on age and gender.
This year, the goal of A Vibrance Christmas was to make it “personal” and as “specific” as possible.
After families were nominated based on need by their healthcare providers and case workers, Vibrance Health Community Health Workers then contacted each family to let them know they had been nominated and then found out more about each child.
They inquired about their interests, their clothes and shoe sizes and used the information to compile a wish list for each family.
With 13 families being nominated, all 13 were fully “adopted” by Vibrance Health staff in under 3 hours after the list was circulated to staff.
“We were overwhelmed by the response,” said Veronica Rodriguez, Vibrance Health patient intervention and community engagement manager.
“Honestly, we expected the staff to just use the wish list as a buying guide for how they could donate a few toys.
We did not expect our staff to completely adopt whole families – and as quickly as they did!”
Rodriguez said there were staff members that adopted more than one family.
And there were staff members that joined together in groups of 3 or four to adopt families.
It was so heartwarming to see how touched and how generously our co-workers responded to the need,” she said.
While not all the families needed it, all of the families were offered a Christmas tree with decorations.
Vibrance was able to provide this wonderful gift to the families thanks to a generous donation of live Christmas trees by Beneath the Oaks Winery and Venue.
“The families who accepted the trees were wonderfully surprised to receive a real, live tree when we made the deliveries,” said Heather Case, Vibrance Health communications director.
“Several commented that they had never had a live tree for Christmas.”
“ They were thrilled.”
Rodriguez said that two little boys were especially delighted to see a decorated Christmas tree waiting at home for them after school on delivery day.
“They were both moved to tears,” she said.
The adults on the list were given gift cards along with the delicious traditional Christmas dinner feast from Home Chef.
“We were honored to bless our patients with A Vibrance Christmas and we hope it brought them much joy this holiday season,” said Harrison.