Sue McElveen a Network volunteer

Network, with support from volunteers like Sue McElveen, helps people in the Lake Highlands area achieve long-term independence through various programs. Photos by Danny Fulgencio.

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On one of the first cold days of the year, Oct. 27, Sue McElveen, a volunteer at the North Dallas-based Network of Community Ministries, led a project that required massive manpower and impeccable organization. McElveen oversees Network’s Santa Holiday Project, which last year provided presents to more than 2,300 painstakingly vetted children from the Richardson Independent School District. On this wintery Saturday, she and her team of helpers — elves, if you will — interviewed some 300 Far North Dallas, Richardson and Lake Highlands families, mostly recommended by counselors at one of RISD’s 38 elementary schools, in an effort to ensure that Network’s resources go to our area’s most-deserving and in-need recipients. “There are fairly strict guidelines, including that you can’t use the service more than three consecutive years,” she explains. “Like all the services at Network, it’s about giving a hand up, not a handout.” McElveen usually starts the Santa Holiday Project process in August — meeting with school representatives and volunteers and updating requisite paperwork. (She says she would have no hope of keeping track of everything were it not for data-keeping elf Betty Lanz.) Families with elementary-school children qualify, but once they are accepted, all children in the family, even teens, receive gifts. Parents are allowed to pick 3-4 items for each child — athletic balls, board games, brand new books and dolls — all donated to Network by neighbors, companies and churches. Throughout November and December, volunteers Val and Don Tarrent run the overflowing toy warehouse where more elves sort gifts before parents arrive to pick up opaque grey bags packed with presents that would be impossible without this program. The work is difficult but rewarding, McElveen says. She still gets choked up when she talks about those she has met. “One woman came in and I thought she was here to get help for her family, but instead she told me she brought toys to donate, that we had helped her before and now she wanted to thank us and help another family.”

Visit network.org for more information or to donate.