Windermere Real Estate

Happy New Year from the Windermere Foundation!

Judy Curran, Foundation Rep for our Madison Park office, sent me a story about how they helped a couple families in desperate need of a little holiday cheer. Please be sure to click on the link to an article in the Seattle Post Intelligencer about one of the families.

Madison Park Office Christmas Families 2008

The agents at the Madison Park Office enriched their Christmas by making Christmas better for not one, but two families in need. The Collins family consisted of a single Mom and five children from seven months old to ten years old. Living on section 8, their sparsely furnished home contained very little furniture and no Christmas tree or presents. The Crichton family was a Mom and Dad and seven children! The Dad had suffered a near fatal heart attack and had been in a coma for over a month and is still regaining brain and mobility functions. He was featured on the front page of the Seattle PI on Christmas day as a Christmas heart-warming story. Being the bread-winner of the family, they were experiencing an extreme financial crisis.

In this year of lack, our agents outdid themselves with presents for the children and parents, bringing bicycles, helmets, and lots of pretty wrapped presents. To make their Christmas even fuller we provided more presents and food from our foundation money.

The week of snow prior to Christmas presented its own challenges. Our foundation rep and husband were fortunate to have a four-wheel-drive vehicle and spent the days before Christmas running around buying additional gifts and clothing. Because of the snow the two families had been unable to get food in the house, so bags of groceries were purchased and delivered to very appreciative Mothers. Imagine how much food is needed to feed families of this size, especially the Crichton family, where most of the kids are teenagers!

Both families were overwhelmed with the generosity of our Windermere Agents and the kids were ecstatic to have presents from Santa. Mom Crichton cried and four of her daughters sang the “Santas” a song in harmony. Pictures were taken and hugs went all around.

Unfortunately, Santa was late with a good camera for our foundation rep, and her old camera took terrible pictures, so you will just have to imagine these beautiful pictures and the open hearts of all involved!

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/393609_medic25.html

I hope 2009 is filled with peace, joy and good health. Oh… and prosperity, too!

Christine Wood

Greetings from the Windermere Foundation,

Recently, Windermere Services challenged each department to bring in either cans of food or cash donations for local food banks. While there were incentives to be the winning department, in addition to the obvious rewards of helping others, each department took the challenge seriously. The challenge ran for one month and the totals were impressive: $8,096.10 in cash donations and over 2,430 pounds of food were taken to Food Lifeline and Northwest Harvest. Needless to say, they were thrilled with the donations and especially thankful because while donations are down about 30%, the need has nearly tripled for many of the local food banks. And…. per Food Lifeline, every $1 of cash raised will feed approximately 5 people. So…this donation of $8,096 will provide 40,480 meals for families in need – in addition to the food donated! That’s cool.

Christine Wood
Windermere Foundation

Greetings from the Windermere Foundation,

As the holiday season approaches, I thought I’d include information about what you can do to help less fortunate families, especially the children, during this important time. We encourage offices to adopt families through their local social service organizations or their local schools. Organize volunteers in your office to do the shopping, wrapping and delivering. Consider having a gift wrapping party and serve food and festive libations. Some families prefer to remain anonymous, so if it’s important for you to be able to deliver the gifts directly to the families, please check with the organization first to see if that’s an option. This is a great way to help those who need our help now more than ever. Not only is this a fun way to get involved, it’s very rewarding when you know that you’ve made someone’s holiday a little brighter.

Christine Wood

Be sure to subcribe to our NEW blog! We are excited to have a new way to keep you updated on exciting Foundation events, news, photos, and stories.

Keep up the great work!

Families Get Help in the “Nick” of Time

Food – the Necessity of Life

Helping Families in Need During the Holiday Season

Our New Blog!