Princeton Athletics and the Student-Athlete Service Council (SASC) recently introduced a new care package initiative to support the Children’s Home Society of New Jersey.
Located in Trenton, the Children’s Home Society is a local foster care center that helps at-risk infants, children, and youth. Its mission is to build healthy families and help them achieve their full potential by educating parents on how to create loving homes.
Each year, the organization assists hundreds of families who have recently immigrated to the United States. To help families during this transition, the group hosts a series of educational seminars for expectant mothers to address some of the unique cultural and linguistic needs of delivering a baby. During this Prenatal Health Education and Support Program, each mother receives a special baby shower with gifts to help them take care of their new infants.
To make these showers extra special, Princeton student-athletes assembled 150 gift bags to surprise the organization’s new infant mothers. Each care package was packed with a Tiger onesie, baby bib, socks, pacifier, and newborn grooming kit which were delivered in time for Mother’s Day. Student-athletes also wrote letters of encouragement for each mother, sending well wishes to all of the families and their new “Tiger Cubs”.
When asked about the new service program, Assistant Manager for Athletics Advancement, Melissa Stephens said “As an athletics department, it is always exciting when our student-athletes come to us with new ideas for how they want to engage with their community. Expanding our partnerships with community organizations has been critical in helping us offer new volunteer opportunities to student-athletes this year. The Children’s Home Society of New Jersey was a great opportunity for us to establish new relationships in Trenton while contributing to a worthy cause. It was truly special seeing our teams come together to assemble these care packages, and we hope that each gift bag will make the mothers feel supported and celebrated in this new chapter of their lives.”
Click here to view behind the scenes photos of the care package assembly process.
