Here Comes Santa Claus Huge Success

The YMCA of Youngstown’s Annual Event Provides Happiness to Local Families

December 18th, 2021

(Youngstown, OH) The YMCA of Youngstown holds an annual event called Here Comes Santa Claus to help bring joy to families in need during the holidays! Due to Covid issues and lack of onsite space, we took this event on the road! The goal is to provide presents to children in need in our community and to provide a meal for each family to be able to cook and celebrate together. 

We were able to serve 58 families with 104 children in Mahoning County. The YMCA held a Christmas basket raffle to raise funds to help pay for the groceries and gift cards for the families.  Donations for the raffle came from vendors in our community including Mission BBQ, Catullo Prime Meats, Mocha House, Youngstown Phantoms, and many more! YMCA members participated by donating gifts as well as supporting the raffle by purchasing tickets.

This program was spearheaded by Nicole Murray, YMCA Youth & Teen Director with support from Day Camp Coordinators, Nicole Clark and Allie Spayd, who helped package the food and gifts for each household while also assisting in delivery to all the families. The YMCA Leaders Club also joined in by helping to wrap the presents.

Jim Harris, our Y After School bus driver, safely transported our staff to the Mahoning County homes, and our Aquatic Director, Ed Metzinger, dressed as the big guy himself!

Tom Gacse, YMCA of Youngstown CEO discussed how special it was to help local families this time of year, “Being able to drop off the gifts and groceries on their doorstep as they watched us through their windows and doors while they smiled and waved safely, meant the world to us. The safety and happiness of our community is not only our top priority, it’s what we strive for. We were also deeply appreciative of the fact that we were able to impact families who were in need.”

Our staff loved being able to visit families, like the Krashoff family who wrote, “Thank you so much!!! My kids were so happy to see Santa and his helpers, and everything was perfect.”  Several families were dealing with Covid and other ailments at the time, so this program and the delivery of the food and gifts was especially beneficial.  We were all gratified to be able to give back to those in need in our community. The joy on the children’s faces when they saw Santa made all our hard work worth it!