Many organizations in the community come together during the holidays to ensure disadvantaged families have presents under the tree for their children on Christmas morning.

During a Drug Free Muskingum board meeting, the board members were discussing where to allocate leftover funds from their Recovering Our Community event in September. A person who is in recovery mentioned buying Christmas gift for children whose parents are in early recovery.

Monica Batteiger, co-founder of Drug Free Muskingum, said recovery is demanding, which leaves little financial room and time for gift giving.

“Sometimes their treatment plans are very demanding and maybe they can’t work a lot or maybe they can’t work at all and we just know that, often, if they can’t provide for their children it can … make them feel bad about it, maybe be a trigger,” she said.

People in the community were asked to help identify people in early recovery who had children and could benefit from the program. While many people are in recovery, Batteiger said the organization was seeking to identify people who could use the help the most.

One of the requirements was that the families could not be involved with receiving any other assistance from organizations for the holidays.

After the recipients were identified, Drug Free Muskingum decided to purchase gifts for 30 children.

While many organizations limit gift purchasing to younger children, Drug Free Muskingum decided to accept all ages of children in need of gifts.

“A lot of the times the teenagers get left out, so we just said any of the kids from zero to 18,” Batteiger said. “And we’d enjoy shopping for them, so we’re just happy to help.”

To Batteiger’s knowledge, there is no other program in the community that is dedicated to specifically helping families in recovery purchase gifts for the holidays, which made the board more eager to serve that demographic.

Three members of the organization went shopping for the gifts and distributed them to families last Friday.

The parents involved were asked if they wanted to receive the presents wrapped or unwrapped and it was decided that the gifts would be delivered unwrapped as many parents wanted to be an active participant in the gifting process.

Since the program has now started, Batteiger said it’s an initiative that Drug Free Muskingum hopes to continue in the future.