Philanthropy
Operation School Bell and Teen Spree
This program benefits disadvantaged students in kindergarten through high school. Our chapter and Target in Mission Viejo have joined together to provide students with an opportunity to start the school year with new clothes and school supplies. Studies show that children who come to school appropriately dressed can improve attendance and classroom performance. More…
Links to Learning
This program grants funds to intermediate and high school teachers allowing them to purchase additional tools to enrich classroom learning as well as expand the existing curriculum with new innovative approaches. Twenty-six grants were awarded in 2011-2012 for a total of $15,000. More…
Field Study Program
This program subsidizes transportation costs for students in grades K through 6 who attend the science field study program at Trabuco Elementary School. The school was founded in 1879 and is considered the oldest school in Orange County. The program is an exciting outdoor educational field trip with grade level activities correlated to classroom science units.
Operation Camp Pendleton
We join with six area Assistance League chapters to provide clothing and supplies for low income military families. In addition, our chapter partners with the Capistrano Valley chapter providing clothing, diapers, and baby wipes to those military families with infants and toddlers.
Senior Outreach
Senior Outreach offers compassion and friendship in our Senior Community by delivering hot meals and cold breakfasts and lunches with warm smiles and friendly conversation to homebound seniors in Laguna Woods. We work in conjunction with South County Services to provide this service, and over the past ten years, our volunteers have worked more than forty (40) hours per month delivering over twenty thousand meals.
Assisting Shelter Homes
This program reaches out to abused women and their children at Laura’s House. Each month we receive a wish list of needed items from the shelter such as clothing, pajamas, diapers, shoes and hygiene items. Committee members purchase and deliver the items from the wish list to the shelter.
Adopt-A-Family
This program provides food to disadvantaged families at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Families are identified by South County Outreach (SCO). At Christmas, we include gifts for the children of the families. In addition, our chapter provides items and funds for the SCO’s food pantry.
Wishing Well
Our Wishing Well program provides entertaining and educational items such as mobiles, rattles and teethers, craft materials, CD’s and CD players, stuffed animals, cars and trucks to assist infants and primary-aged children while they are patients in Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) or Mission Hospital.
Infant Bereavement
Infant Bereavement provides memory boxes to parents who have lost their babies at CHOC, Mission Hospital, and Saddleback Memorial Medical Center The boxes include items such as a gown for burial of the infant, a camera, a Certificate of Life for the hand and footprints of the baby, and a ceramic heart-within-a-heart (the smaller heart to be buried with the baby and the larger one for the mother to keep).
Operation Baby Love
This program provides layettes for newborns of low income families. Women from the Norman P. Murrary Senior Center in Mission Viejo provide the chapter with hand knitted blankets and clothing items. The chapter provides tote bags, toys, rattles, diapers, wipes, receiving blankets and other clothing items.
Support Literacy
Our goal is to support elementary students who are developing reading skills. Monthly, three library volunteers work two-hour shifts reading books from teachers’ wish lists to K-2nd grade classrooms. The books are then donated to the school library. Three additional volunteers assist students in grades 2-6 in completing reading assessments in the computer lab. Yearly, a parent/child literacy evening is held where families enjoy a professional storyteller, receive information regarding early literacy development, and complete a related activity with volunteers.