Sponsors Adopt Families for Holidays

Hundreds of needy families in the area will be adopted this holiday season by local organizations that will provide them with food, clothing and other gifts.

Manna Conejo Valley Food Bank already plans to deliver gifts and food baskets to 627 needy families, although 400 families still need to be adopted.

“We always have more families that want to be adopted,” said Pauline Saterbo, the organization’s executive director. “I just have to wait for people to call in and adopt.”

Sponsor families receive a list of the clothing sizes and ages of the family members so they can buy appropriate gifts. Each sponsoring family delivers food, clothing and gifts to Manna, and the receiving family is contacted to pick up its holiday basket.

Another holiday community support effort is the Christmas Adoption Program. Although it isn’t as widely known as Manna, this nonprofit organization also adopts needy families in the Conejo Valley. It is sponsored by American Recovery Service Inc., which works with Lutheran Social Services to serve needy families, some of which are referred by Manna.

The names, ages, clothing sizes and toy preferences of family members are given to sponsors, who fill the requests and deliver the items to the family’s front door.

In two years, the adoption program has doubled the number of families it serves to 100.

“It was surprising to find out how many needy families there are in the area,” said Audrey Ritter, one of the program’s board members. “There’s a lot of public housing. There’s a lot of working poor families who have money for the day-to-day things, but they wouldn’t have enough money for toys for Christmas. It seems like everyone in Thousand Oaks has a Mercedes, but it’s a lot different than that.”

For residents who aren’t necessarily needy, Conejo Community Dinners provides a free lunch from noon to 4 p.m. Christmas Day at the Thousand Oaks High School gym. More than 100 volunteers will be on hand at the sixth annual holiday dinner to cook, bake, serve and entertain the expected 300 guests.

“We started out the first year not knowing what to expect,” said Donn Delson, founder of the organization. “We didn’t know if there was going to be 10 people or 600, so we made food for 600. We had 200 people show up. It seems like each year we have more people. Many of the guests now have come before. It’s almost like a small extended family that gets together once a year and grows in numbers.”