Chanukah brings light, joy, and warmth to our homes and communities as we celebrate with candles, food, family, and friends. Light comes literally, with the lighting of an additional candle each day, and metaphorically by giving back to our community.
There are many ways to help — whether you want to donate items, time, or money. You can make a positive difference in someone’s life during this holiday season and below is a list of meaningful ways to help, provided by our program partners.
Support-a-Family Programs:
Social service agencies can match you with a family in need and suggest gifts they would appreciate- usually basics like clothing, household items, and toys for children.
Food Packaging and Delivery
A great way to give back is by giving your time, providing meals or food to those in need.
Toy and Gift Drives
Purchasing gifts for those in need is simple, inexpensive and helps spark the spirit of giving.
- Armed Services YMCA Camp Pendleton: Be a family’s Secret Santa.
- Hope Through Housing: Host a drive.
- People Assisting the Homeless (PATH): Blanket drive.
- Traveling Stories: Toy drive.
Fundraisers
A few more opportunities to share…
- Encinitas4Equality: Support scholarships for post-high school students.
We wish you a wonderful holiday season!
Stacie and Jeff Cook understand commitment. They live it.
Black, Jewish and Queer. These three identities weave the fabric of who I am, but it took a long time to believe that they could exist together.
Lee and Toni Leichtag established the Leichtag Foundation in 1991 following the sale of their business. Lee and Toni were lifelong entrepreneurs with a passion for innovation and for supporting talent. They believed that only with big risk comes big reward. Both born to families in poverty, Toni to a single mother, they strongly believed in helping those most in need and most vulnerable in our community. While they supported many causes, their strongest support was for young children and the elderly, two demographics who particularly lack voice in our society.
Lifelong Baltimoreans, Rabbi George and Alison Wielechowski and their sons, 11-year-old Lennon and 9-year-old Gideon, are more than pursuing the good life in Southern California. Having moved to San Diego more than three years ago, they are fulfilling a lifelong dream.
You would think that as the executive director of San Diego LGBT Pride, Fernando Zweifach López Jr., who uses the pronoun they, has done all the coming out they possibly can. A queer, non-binary individual who has worked for many years on civil rights issues, López also speaks openly and often about their father’s family, Mexican-American migrant workers who tilled the fields of rural California.