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Monmouth student-athletes brighten Christmas for those less
fortunate Release Date:
Dec. 16, 2009
MONMOUTH, Ill. —
A group of student-athletes at Monmouth College made
Christmas a bit more cheery for 30 residents of Warren Achievement
Center’s Community Independent Living Arrangement (CILA) in
Monmouth.
The college’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee spent the last two
weeks collecting gifts for the special needs young adults at CILA
through an Angel Tree program. Less than a day after the campus-wide
announcement of the project, all the angels on the tree had been
claimed by students, staff and faculty.
SAAC representatives Lynsey Barnard, Justine Boone and
Lauren Bergstresser and faculty advisor Melissa Bittner
delivered the van load of gifts Tuesday night to a grateful group.
“It was very rewarding seeing the joy on their faces,” said Boone, a
junior business major from Geneseo. “As athletes, we’re lucky and
don’t usually think about persons with disabilities. It was an
eye-opening experience.”
The Angel Tree grew out of an idea the SAAC members had to decorate
the CILA residents’ rooms for the holidays. That notion quickly grew
into something bigger.
“These special needs people are about our age and many don’t have
parents close by,” explained Barnard, a senior biopsychology major
from Pekin. “We’re about the same age as the residents, but we get
to go home and spend Christmas with our families. Some of them have
parents who live out of state and won’t see them at all. It makes us
realize how lucky we really are.”
The student committee and the CILA residents both got something out
of the program. The special needs residents got Christmas gifts they
might not have received otherwise and the SAAC members experienced
the real meaning of Christmas.
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