Calabasas Nonprofit Spreads Holiday Cheer To Sick Children

CALABASAS, CA — “Is there anything in particular she likes? Candles? Hats? We have lotions, scarves,” volunteer Rachel Serrano said to a laptop as she slowly panned its screen over a table packed to the brim with donated gifts.

“Maybe some candles or something like that,” came a voice at the other end of the laptop.

“I think she’s gonna love them,” Serrano replied.

Serrano was one of many volunteers dressed in Santa hats and holiday sweaters Monday helping children at UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital pick out gifts for their caretakers, an annual initiative from Calabasas nonprofit Connecting A Caring Community. Normally, volunteers display gifts at the hospital, but during the pandemic, about a dozen volunteers gathered in a Calabasas office building to offer the children gifts virtually. On Monday and Tuesday, volunteers delivered specially curated gifts for the children to give to their caretakers.

“Mattel gives them all the toys, so they get everything, but they can’t get out of the hospital and have their parents have something for Christmas,” said Executive Director Lisa Kodimer.

But that’s just a small fraction of what the nonprofit has been able to pull off during a surprisingly successful year. After raising nearly $85,000 - about $50,000 more than they were expecting during a pandemic - Connecting A Caring Community has been able to donate over 300 gifts to UCLA Children’s Hospital. The organization is providing every child with a blanket, a wrapped snow globe, and materials to build a gingerbread house. Organization volunteers also created a gingerbread village in the hospital filled with houses built by community volunteers.

Parents of babies in the hospital’s newborn intensive care unit are receiving hot cocoa, popcorn, and coffee mugs, and parents of children in the psychiatric ward are receiving gift bags with makeup, water mugs, and candy.

The wrapped snow globes were inspired by Mark Friedman, a Calabasas resident with Stage IV cancer, who donated 3,000 snow globes he'd collected over 40 years from over 130 countries, donated most of them to children’s hospitals in Chicago and New Mexico. Kodimer was inspired to create a CCC initiative called Snow Globes and Smiles, and two generous donations helped her provide all children at Mattel with wrapped snow globes.

“It’s one hundred percent about the kids in there, and their struggle, and their fight, because I know that I have trouble, because I have Stage IV cancer, so I can’t imagine what the kids go through,” said Friedman, who has also donated to the nonprofit to help sustain its snow globe program.

CCC has also been able to “adopt” ten families from the hospital and ten foster children living in a residential group home, and spent almost a thousand dollars per family to provide them with gifts from personal wish lists.

“The social workers find us the most needy families, and you’d be surprised what’s on their wish list - a lot of times it’s just a coat to keep them warm,” Kodimer said.

Hospital administrators thanked volunteers for providing a wide array of gifts to children during the pandemic, when more children than ever are either sick or financially insecure.

“We have a lot of kids in the hospital right now obviously due to the situation that the city is in, and the country is in, who are really, really sick,” Kellye Carroll, director of the Chase Child Life Program at UCLA Mattel, told volunteers. “These kids can’t usually in a typical world go out into a mall situation or Target or Kohl’s...this year in particular as we all know there’s no way our kids are setting foot outside. So to be able to help them have something for the people who care for them around this time of year is very special and very empowering.”