Holiday Treat: Helping Others : NEWPORT BEACH : Company Brings Party to Needy

Employees at a Newport Beach company this Christmas will forgo the office poinsettias and gift exchange.

For the fourth Christmas in a row, the employees at Best Plans, a company that manages insurance programs, will pool the money they would have spent in on a holiday party and exchange of gifts and put it toward providing a special Christmas for a needy family.

“Year after year we got together and exchanged dumb gifts, until four years ago we started thinking that the money we spent on each other for things we really didn’t need could make a real difference, be of real value, for someone less fortunate,” said Netty Downing, a participant in what has become a company tradition.

Through the Big Brothers/Big Sisters chapter in Tustin, Downing and her co-workers were matched with a family in need of help.

“We delivered wrapped gifts, the ingredients for a Christmas dinner, a tree, the whole shot,” employee Paula Cushing said. “The first year we had a single mom and her two boys. . . . The whole time we were bringing in the gifts the boys stayed quiet in the background. When we had finished and were getting ready to leave, the younger boy, who was 12, grabbed me and hugged me, telling me, ‘Thank you so much for making a Christmas for my mom,’ ” Downing said. “It was pretty special.”

For the past two years, Cushing said, the office has adopted the same family.

“The mother kept in touch with us, and we got to see how much they had progressed. She had gotten a job, was going to school, and she and her two girls were really doing well. These are people who are trying to help themselves. They’re not just sitting back and taking handouts; they are actively working to improve their lives.”

Jo Alexander, executive director of the Big Brothers/Big Sisters in Tustin, said she hopes that more offices will come forward to be matched with a family.

To find out more about adopting a family for the holiday, contact Big Brothers at (714) 544-7773.