Late this summer, Trade Global and Claire’s provided 20 pallets of fashion accessories, toys and gifts for Dragonfly to give to our families. While we accepted delivery of the items late this summer, logistically, we were unable to get get them immediately into the hands of our patients and families. Things finally fell into place in November (almost like they were meant to be, actually); we were able to set up the “Dragonfly Store” for the holidays.
Thank you to:
We’d like to make the following acknowledgements before continuing:
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- Trade Global and Claire’s for all the incredible Claire’s toys, gifts, clothes, time, and smiles you gave! You could have chosen any recipient, but you chose Dragonfly! (I also need to give a huge shout out to Trade Global’s Tisha Neely for helping us go through and palletize everything)
- Our staff (Ally, Carrie, Hannah, Jen), the many volunteers who worked countless hours organizing and inventorying gifts, and who continue to give up their weekends to help with the project
- Tim Caruso and Caruso Logistics for their semi trucks and warehouse space
- Casto for allowing us to use a real store for 3 months
- The many donors who made it possible for us to turn on the lights and, especially the heat!
- Our cleaning crews, including Rodney Blackburn (EchoPure), Carlos, Gable & Julian Sanchez, Kim Kruspe, Cheryl Shradin & her company Royalty Cleaning
- Our moving guys who unloaded the semi tractor trailer: Corey Cover and Dave Weekly from American WeatherTechs, and Jason Kennedy from Midwest Roofing Supply
- SendWordNow for giving us the ability to call, text, and email our Dragonfly families about our (multiple) weekly patient/family events
- Ria and Christine’s hubbies (Jim Neitzke, Matt Davidson) who also helped staff our store on a Saturday
- And anyone else remotely connected to making Dragonfly possible in 2017!
With the help of everyone involved we have been able to offer shopping excursions to our patients and families, just in time for the holidays. The items have also allowed us to gift patients at times when they needed joy, and to provide gifts/activities to Cincinnati Children’s and Dayton Children’s Hospitals.
One of our families sent us this note:
“I cannot thank you enough for the opportunity for the Christmas shop today! We have been struggling so much and our furnace motor blew last night, so Christmas for our 4 kids was only going to be from family. However, thanks to (Dragonfly) and you, we were able to get some toys, games, hats and shirts for all of our kids! I left crying because I am so blessed to be apart of something so great with such a big heart and love for the patients and their families!! God bless all that you do!”
We will continue to hold shopping days for our families up until December 23rd.
Thank you for giving us the privilege to serve our Dragonflies, and for giving our patients/families these opportunities.