JCPenney, YMCA team up to help families with post-Harvey holiday shopping

This article was originally published in The Examiner on Dec. 21, 2017.

By Eleanor Skelton
Staff Writer 

JCPenney and the YMCA of Southeast Texas put in a united effort to help families impacted by Harvey’s flooding do some holiday shopping Dec. 5 at Parkdale Mall and Dec. 10 at Central Mall.

“Some families have lost everything,” YMCA of Southeast Texas President and CEO William Oliver said. “They’re in a hotel, they’re uprooted. This was a wonderful opportunity for us to help 20 of our families get back on [their] feet.”

The shopping event was an extension of JCPenney’s nationwide partnership with the YMCA, Oliver said, which also includes an after-school program.

Families impacted by Tropical Storm Harvey were selected from YMCA’s scholarship
program list, Oliver said.

Oliver described one elderly woman whose first question was where to find the bedding once they handed her a gift card, adding that these are basic necessities, not just frivolous things that Harvey’s victims were buying.

“This made it an easier Christmas,” Oliver said.

“We’ve been in business for decades here in Southeast Texas, but we want to be part of the community,” said Parkdale Mall’s JCPenney General Manager Lon Hawkins. “We naturally had employees impacted, and we did things to take care of our employees, but we want to extend further into the community and take care of our longstanding customers.”

“This was just one way we could do that,” he said, explaining that the store was giving $250 of gift cards to 20 individuals identified by the YMCA of Southeast Texas as being in dire need of assistance due to Hurricane Harvey’s devastation.

“Today was the day they could shop and kind of rebuild or get their essentials, or basically get whatever they want,” Hawkins said. “It’s their time to kind of get back to normalcy, and we’re glad to be a partner in that.”

Other staff helping Hawkins handout the gift cards said they loved seeing smiles on customer’s faces.

Three Dallas-based organizations — the Twins Foundation, Oakcliff Bible Fellowship, and Concord Church — also partnered with the YMCA of Southeast Texas for this shopping event, Oliver said.