A Letter From Deborah: HELPing Christmas to Come to Our Staff

HELP INTERNATIONAL

Staff Christmas Party

Time again for our Help International 

Christmas party; a wonderful time
of riotous games, Christmas songs
and yummy food. 

Celebrating together is an important
way to bond your hearts to one
another. Everyone looks forward
to this special time to gather
together. 

The cost of the food and games prizes comes to $250.

Christmas Eve is a very important time in 

Filipino homes. It is very difficult for our
staff to save much for their Christmas
meal, so every year we
try to give them an extra
blessing of a food basket.
This year we would like to
be able to share with each of our
staff’s family a Christmas food
basket each worth $22 (P1,000).
Your family can share some
Christmas Eve spirit with
a HELP staff family by sponsoring a basket.
We will need forty baskets this year.

The main items that we need for the forty baskets

are:P12,000($266) for hams, P7,152 ($158) for cheese

balls, P6,000 ($133) for the 40 bags to put items in.

My hope for this year is to also purchase a bag of rice

for each worker as a way to help our staff this 

Christmas. The cost of a bag of rice is $35. 

A special treat I would like to surprise our workers

with at our Christmas party is a small 20 inch Christmas

tree per worker. None of our staff have a Christmas

tree in their home. The cost per tree is  P300($7). I have

someone who is willing to sponsor ten trees so I am in 

need of 26 more trees which will cost P7,800 ($181). 

The way we are going to decorate them is Sunday School

children in Australia will be preparing the ornaments 

per tree and mailing them to Manila.

Christmas bonuses are important tradition in the

Philippines. At Christmas and New Year often 

relatives in the provinces will visit their family in the

city of Manila. All of the food expenses and sometimes

even the travel money for the relatives to return to their

homes fall on the host in Manila. That Manila host is

often one of our workers. It is common to perceive the

city people as having lots of money. The Christmas bonus

helps our staff not to go in debt when sharing hospitality

with their families.