Over a hundred years ago, the Children's Enrichment Committee was born from the desire to provide orphans with home knit mittens for Christmas.
Soon the women who founded the organization realized the needs of orphans, and later children in foster care, required more than new mittens at Christmastime. The CEC expanded to give children the gifts they want at the holidays, and to give them camperships, so they can enjoy summer camp, and to give them even more basic things like shoes and socks.
One of the programs members are most proud of is the Emily Akers Scholarship Fund. Currently, the CEC is giving scholarships to three remarkable young Orange County residents. We recently received a letter from one of them telling us she had used her Emily Akers funding to pay for airfare so that she could take advantage of her university's study abroad program. With our help, she was able to learn the lessons that only living in a different culture can provide.
Many CEC members are teachers, who especially appreciate the importance of the gift of learning. Our new president, Kathy Hufcut, and vice president, Nancy Babbin, suggested for our September meeting that we bring notebooks and pens and pencils for area children to use at the start of the new school year. We were happy to do so and a basket was filled with our donations.
For our October meeting, Kathy suggested we bring children's and young adult books. No doubt the basket will be filled again.
The gift of a book is the gift of a world. The Children's Enrichment Committee is eager to enrich the lives of Orange County children, from mittens to the marvels of learning.
