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Community Connections : Youth

Vice President Pardon brings Angel Tree Ho-Ho-Hope to the community

Even without the white beard and droll button nose, children who meet George Pardon, vice president of administration and finance, may think he's Santa Claus as he goes from house to house in Compton and Carson giving presents and candy canes in the days leading up to Christmas. Starting in 2000, Pardon has made his rounds as a part of Angel Tree, a national program bringing gifts to children of incarcerated parents.

Pardon brought Angel Tree to CSUDH while he was researching the feasibility and reception of the Home Depot Center within the community. "The real question, once I told them I would initiate the program, was what if I send out an e-mail and no one responds? I went home to my wife and said, 'well, best case scenario is people embrace this, and worst case scenario is that we buy two gifts for 34 kids.' We decided to personally assume that risk. As it turned out, I sent out the first e-mail on a Tuesday and by Thursday, all the cards were gone."

That first year of overwhelming success has continued as the program increases the number of children it takes on by 10 percent each year. In the programs third year in 2002, CSUDH sponsored 41 children in Carson and Compton as it outgrew the number of children in Carson alone, and Pardon says it could have supported 50 children based on the level of interest. Each volunteer participant was asked to buy a $15-20 toy or piece of clothing for a child, although many volunteers took on both the toy and clothing responsibility. The Office of Administration & Finance's Jean McTaggart, Sherrie McKey, Terri Warren, and Vernesta Johnson and the School of Education's Malaika Horne, called each child's guardian(s) so that participants not only know the child's name, but their age and what they would like as a gift as well. Personalizing the donations makes Angel Tree unique in comparison to many toy drives where identity is concealed.

"You know you got a gift the child wanted, you know their name, you know that a parent is incarcerated. It's a great opportunity to do some good for kids who don't have a lot of money, don't have both parents at home, and you add the extra stigma that at least one of the parents is in jail – as I said in my campus e-mails, it's the kids who do the hard time," continues Pardon.

"Oftentimes, the parent writes a note so you get to say, 'your daddy told us to say he loves you and misses you very much.' So it's more than Santa Claus, because the kids can see him at the mall, but at that moment in time, we step in as that missing parent."

Angel Tree began 20 years ago as the brainchild of an ex-con who saw first-hand how incarcerated parents still hoped to bring holiday cheer to their children by trading toiletries and wrapping them up as gifts for their children. Now established through the Prison Fellowship Ministries, Angel Tree provides gifts for nearly two million children each year.

Although Pardon has plans to continue and grow the program as needed, he has a much clearer vision of the ideal future. "The ideal situation is that the program would go away because no one had an incarcerated parent. I would love to one day have a student who chooses to attend Dominguez Hills because we reached out to them through Angel Tree when they were five or six years old."

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