A Season Of Service For Junior Auxiliary
The Junior Auxiliary of Water Valley has been busy this month with its largest service project of the year, Project Santa. Team members at Solero Technologies provided gifts for 30 children on the list. Pictured with the gifts provided by the Solero team are Human Resources Manager Adrian Tallant (left), Plant Manager Gerardo Garcia (right), along with Junior Auxiliary member Dolores Turner.
A Monthly Report
From The JA Of WV
By Katherine Montague
December always feels like the busiest time of the year. So many gatherings and celebrations and parades and ways to come together as a community make this month so very merry and bright. Our Junior Auxiliary chapter met this month to talk through all of our current and upcoming projects that you can read about here, but this was not just a standard monthly meeting because we also enjoyed a potluck plate together along with a hilarious ornament swap. Enjoying each other as we gather with great food and lots of laughter is such a special way for our chapter to grow the bonds we form through the work we do.
In addition to celebrating together, the Junior Auxiliary of Water Valley has been busy at work this month with our largest service project of the year, Project Santa. Near and dear to our mission to serve the children of Yalobusha County, this project coordinates community members with children who would otherwise not receive Christmas presents to provide their families with gifts for Christmas morning. There are so many ways to contribute. Donors can make direct financial contributions, purchase individual items from our online wish lists, or adopt entire wish lists to purchase every gift on the list for each recipient. Our Active Members, Provisional Members and Life Members, along with some very special community volunteers, make this project possible, and with all of your help JA is so grateful to provide gifts this year for 94 children who live in our community.
Special thanks to team members at Solero Technologies, pictured here, for adopting 30 of these angels again this year.
This month, the students of Water Valley High School, Davidson Elementary School, Coffeeville High School and Coffeeville Elementary School who reside in homes experiencing food insecurity will continue to receive their weekly Bundle of Love pack, with next week’s bundle containing extra food to enjoy over the holiday break from school. Our Bundles program has been evolving remarkably with some new food sourcing ideas that were implemented in order to become more cost efficient with rising food prices, and we are so thankful to our ongoing contributors who make this project possible. We are currently serving 106 students at all four schools with your support.
On Monday night, our chapter visited the Yalobusha General Hospital’s nursing home to hand out Christmas happies with cards, socks and cozy blankets to spread Christmas joy to the residents there. These happies included socks and blankets gathered together from community contributions, along with hand-painted Christmas cards from the Water Valley High School art students.
Last Friday night, we were so pleased to support not one, but two Watermelon Queens as beauties in the Water Valley Christmas Parade. Our annual Watermelon Pageant provides a scholarship for college to the winner, and because this is our first year to host the Watermelon Pageant in the fall instead of the spring, this year’s Christmas Parade featured both our 2024–25 Watermelon Queen Mya Harden as well as our 2025–26 Watermelon Queen Preslee Fischer. Thank you, ladies, for representing us beautifully.
Imagination Library is a program that provides an age-appropriate children’s book mailed to your home from birth to age 5, when your child starts kindergarten, from the Dollywood Foundation. The Junior Auxiliary of Water Valley administers this program here in Yalobusha County, and we hit a wonderful milestone this month. Not only are there 319 current Imagination Library recipients, but we also have had 200 children graduate from this program as of this December. Many thanks to the ongoing financial supporters of this amazing program.
While we have been busy little elves packing presents and spreading Christmas cheer, we are also actively looking ahead to the next few months of fundraising in our community with many fun ways to give. Upcoming in the new year, we will host our annual Charity Ball and Silent Auction, and we will also send our patrons letters to give all of the details on every project we do, along with ways that you are able to be involved. We truly could not accomplish all of the wonderful ways that we are able to serve the children of Yalobusha County without your support. Thank you and Merry, Merry Christmas, with gratitude.
