THE ARCHER SCHOOL FOR GIRLS BRINGS HOLIDAY SPIRIT TO DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES AS PARTICIPANTS IN ANNUAL ADOPT-A-FAMILY PROGRAM

The Saturday morning air was chilly on Skid Row. After two weeks of solid winter freeze, the downtown cement holds its deep cold until noon. Huddled figures hunch in corners, swaddled in layers of any available insulation: old coats, unzipped sleeping bags, even black garbage bags. Some individuals have little more than a flattened cardboard box as a comfort as the sun rises over LA’s skyline.

This was the setting on December 15, 2013 where students from The Archer School for Girls, many showing “Panther Pride” clad in their purple and green school gear, arrived to deliver Christmas parcels to 400 families living in poverty in downtown Los Angeles. The outreach is the annual Adopt-A-Family holiday assistance program, offered every Christmas season for the past 23 years by the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. This year, the program focused on families living in the Skid Row District in crowded hotels and apartments. For numerous reasons, including their impermanence of address, many children living in extreme poverty in this setting cannot be assisted through existing government programs, and are rarely recipients of support from national charities.

More than 40 volunteers, middle school and high school students as well as adults representing Archer, an independent school for girls, participated in Adopt-A-Family, with parents driving and girls delivering wrapped gifts in some of our city’s most joyless streets. In addition to toys and games for children, the Adopt-A-Family program also delivers food, toiletries, blankets, books, baby care items and clothing for the entire family. Volunteers from Staples collected the wrapped gifts from the Archer campus in Brentwood earlier in the week, and delivered them to the designated staging area at the Cathedral of the Angels, located on Temple Street in downtown Los Angeles.

Judey Petix, who has organized the program at Archer for many years, commented “This year the Archer community "adopted" nine families in need and I know that I speak for everyone from Archer when I say that I felt honored to see so many volunteers work together to make this happen for hundreds of families in L.A. When we arrived at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels around 6:30 in the morning the energy and joy was palpable. By around 8:00 a.m., all of the cars were loaded and heading off to make our deliveries. I know we all hope that all of the families who benefited from the program will have prosperity in the new year.”