RED BANK – Each holiday season Lunch Break, Monmouth County’s first soup kitchen and pantry, experiences a transformation and becomes Santa’s workshop by undertaking a huge holiday operation to provide gifts for hundreds of the neediest children from both Monmouth and Ocean counties.
Through its Adopt-A-Family program, new and age-appropriate gifts are distributed to kids from newborns to those 15 years of age. The program is possible because of the generosity and kindness demonstrated by Lunch Break’s good friends and neighbors who, in 2012, brought smiles to the faces of more than 1,200 children. The hope this year is that the wishes of even more children can be fulfilled.
Those who wish can now visit Lunch Break to select a family to adopt. Once shopping is completed for the family, donors may being the bagged and unwrapped gifts, labeled by family name, to the warehouse Lunch Break has temporarily rented at 968 Shrewsbury Ave., Unit 7, in Tinton Falls. Drop off times are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays.
Those who wish to participate don’t have to adopt a whole family. Lunch Break also gladly welcomes random gifts and/or gift cards not attached to any specific family – preteens and teens love gift cards. Those gifts and cards will be distributed to families whose children who are not adopted.
Parents and guardians will gather Dec. 14 at Tower Hill Church where Lunch Break elves will distribute the gifts donated by all the kind and generous Secret Santas who have participated in this year’s efforts to make happy holiday memories for the children of Lunch Break.
The holiday season is fast approaching, and Lunch Break is asking its friends and supporters to share the joy of the season through the Adopt-A-Family program or by donating gifts and/or gift cards.
Dec. 2 is the deadline for delivering unwrapped gifts to the warehouse in Tinton Falls.
Additional information is available by contacting Sharda Jetwani, program director, at 732-784-7360 or online at sjetwani@lunchbreak.org
To learn more about Lunch Break, its activities and events, visit to www.lunchbreak.org, follow it Facebook, call 732-747-8577 or email info@lunchbreak.org.
