The Guardians for New Futures, led by Debbie Butler, center front, partners with CCKids each year
to ensure all children in the Judicial Circuit 19 dependency system receive gifts during the holidays.

Guardians Ensure a Bright Future for CCKids Toy Drive

January 9, 2025

Partnership and community are the hallmarks of CCKids' Making Christmas Bright gift collection. One partner in particular - the Guardians for New Futures - is responsible for a significant increase in project quality.

"We combined our projects about five years ago, allowing CCKids to take advantage of the Guardian's vast network of volunteers," said Jordan Bebout, CCKids' community resource coordinator.

CCKids, in turn, brought an expanding network of local sponsors who coordinate individual gift drives.

"In the past, we would spend the day picking up toys from our sponsors and then just offload everything to our case managers, who would sort through everything and just hope everything was there," Bebout said.

Now, each truckload is brought to the Guardians, who sort, organize and even fill in missing toys. Case managers come to collect their gifts the week before Christmas and distribute to their families.

Additionally, the Guardians are able to work with individuals and families who only want to sponsor one of two children - something CCKids was unable to accommodate on its own.

"It's been an incredible partnership," said Christina Kaiser, CCKids community relations director. "This project gets better every year thanks to them."

The Guardians were created to help fulfill the unfunded needs of the local child-welfare community. They also host an annual child summit and organized the campaign that launched the area's first and only Children's Advocacy Center.