SMC keeps kids out of the cold
Shoshone Medical Center employees Jonnie Nelson and Shayleen Jerome show off some of the coats that were purchased as part of SMC's coat donation program. The coats are either purchased or donated and then given to children attending the three local school districts.
Courtesy photo
KELLOGG — 2020 took a lot of things from the local community, but it couldn’t stop the way Silver Valley residents and businesses continued to take care of one another.
A prime example of that was the coat donations from the SMC Foundation.
2020 would have been the 10-year anniversary of Shoshone Medical Center’s Annual Kids Health Fair — and over the years the fair had been the hub of gathering and dispersing coats to kids in need throughout the area.
Obviously, this wasn’t able to happen this year, but with kids still needing coats, SMC didn’t back down from the challenge.
SMC Business Development Coordinator Shayleen Jerome, as well as SMC Foundation Director Ashlee Myles sprang into motion coordinating efforts between them and the local elementary schools to make sure no kids got left out in the cold.
“SMC Foundation Director, Ashlee Myles, teamed up with us this year in fundraising, purchasing, separating and organizing the coats,” Jerome said. “We see some great opportunities for the foundation and SMC to continue to collaborate in these types of endeavors to offer our best to our local families. We sent order forms to each school and then beginning in October and running through December, I would fulfill the order and deliver them to the schools on Fridays. We did have a few homeschooled families as well as a day care, request coats, and those orders were fulfilled.”
Coats weren’t the only thing that SMC was able to distribute, they took the opportunity to offer some assistance to the families that they were helping out.
“Between the lack of employment in our area and situational poverty, we have a large population of families that are not getting their needs met,” Jerome said. “We were able to gather and compile these resources from local entities, and then deliver bags of this information, books and small gifts to every elementary student in the Silver Valley.”
Jerome didn’t have an exact number for the amount of coats that they donated, but annually they hand out between 200 and 300 between the three local school districts.
Seeing kids without coats can weigh heavily on the minds of teachers who are often powerless to help them, but these efforts did a lot to ease those issues.
“There was no shortage of gratitude and expressed relief from staff members,” Jerome said. “It was definitely a success. We are hoping that we are going to be able to do the Kids Health Fair in the traditional way this fall, but we are now experienced and prepared to provide coats one way or another.”