We’re excited to kick off Sierra Full of Joy on Monday November 27th!  What is Sierra Full of Joy you ask? Well, I can tell you all about it! It is our annual donation drive to benefit local foster children. Each year we take up donations for The Children’s Emergency Shelter & The CALL.

Fort Smith Children’s Emergency Shelter provides shelter & care, in a safe, structured home-like environment for children ages 6-17 who have been removed from their home due to neglect and/or abuse. The mission includes allowing kids to just be kids! They just celebrated their 20th Anniversary last week.  Before the Children’s Emergency Shelter came into existence our local children were being uprooted and taken away to other parts of the state when they entered DHS custody. Their mission is so important to our community especially given the dire foster care crisis here in Sebastian County.

The state of Arkansas has over 5,000 children in foster care, between 800-900 of those are in Sebastian & Crawford counties at any given time. As a
matter of fact, we have on average 200 more kids in foster care in Sebastian & Crawford counties than Pulaski county, which has a population over twice the size of our two counties combined.

The CALL has an important mission to educate, equip and encourage the Christian community to provide a future and a hope for the children in
foster care. They do a great job of not only recruiting foster parents, but also supporting them in the most needed ways. As they state, The CALL is mobilizing Christians from multiple denominations and churches in local communities around Arkansas to meet the needs of local children in foster care. Recruiting families is our priority, however, we know that not every Christian is called to foster or adopt. The CALL works with local churches to assemble a support team of volunteers to wrap around their foster and adoptive families. We also try to connect churches with other opportunities to serve children in foster care.

This is the 5th year for Sierra Full of Joy. Everyone who has generously given has helped make the holidays better for local kids & that’s always a great thing.  Each year we’ve driven that GMC Sierra into our showroom in November with the hopes of filling it up for the Holidays we’ve been blown away by the outpouring of donations of needs, gifts, and cash. It is our hope that Sierra Full of Joy 5 builds on the success of past years & once again breaks records for donations.

We will once again be hosting a dessert bar on December 15th. Dessert bar day is one of the best days at Harry Robinson Buick GMC, besides potluck day :). It’s a great day to come out a drop off your donations & have a super yummy dessert while you’re here.

Below I’ll post the wish lists for both organizations as well as a few pics of our past Sierra Full of Joy events. This year The CALL has requested that in lieu of exclusively buying gift for the children we would donate much-needed supplies & necessities as well as Gas, Grocery, Dinner & Family Entertainment Gift Cards for the families.  Always, Shoes, video games, makeup & gift cards are the most coveted items for kids at Children’s Emergency Shelter.
Our Hours are M-F 7:30a-7P, Sat. 9a-6p & Sunday 12p-5p. Please feel free to drop off your donations anytime between now & December 17th. They will be picking up the donations on the 18th. 

Thank you,

–C

& feel free to get in touch if you have any questions. Cathyn@harryrobinson.com