Credit: Courtesy of Colleen Morneweck

For the past six years, the Wayland Middle School (WMS) Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) has organized the Wayside Gift Drive for the Wayside Youth and Family Support Network. “It’s nice for our kids to have that connection and also to be reminded that life is not easy for everyone everywhere,” Wayside Gift Drive founder Colleen Morneweck said. “Seeing the list every year is what gets me and it is just so nice to see how generous and giving our community can be.”

For the past six years, the Wayland Middle School (WMS) Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) has organized the Wayside Gift Drive for the Wayside Youth and Family Support Network. The 91-children residential campus is located in Framingham, and was created to serve kids who have experienced behavioral difficulties, mental health issues and trauma in addition to other challenges. The clientele is composed of individuals between the ages of 12 and 18. Wayside has six individual programs, which compose of three male and three female programs, and each serve 14 kids.

Wayside Gift Drive founder Colleen Morneweck started the drive in 2017 when she was looking for a way to help the special education community.

“For 12 years, I was a special education surrogate parent, which is a role through the Federation for Children with Special Needs,” Morneweck said. “At a meeting with a case worker at a residential home, I asked [about] the deal with the Department of Children & Families. The case worker said that the home maybe gets $40 per kid, [so] the staff pools their money [together] and tries to [make it work.]”

Morneweck was extremely upset after hearing the situation, so she decided to take matters into her own hands.

“I [ended up] going on Facebook and told [the community about the situation,]” Morneweck said. “I asked [people] to send me gift cards and I was so overwhelmed because people dropped off a couple thousand dollars in cards. I ended up getting too much for that one residential program, so I reached out to Wayside in Framingham [and they also] had [a hard time getting gifts].”

The next year, Morneweck became WMS’s PTO president and decided to continue serving Wayside since it harbored a connection to the Wayland community.

“We have kids in our community that, in crisis, end up going to Wayside,” Morneweck said. “I enlisted my friends to [help me] with all the work and a few of us put it all together. The middle school totally embraced it.”

Morneweck believes that the gift drive’s impact on the kids who live at Wayside is profound and heartwarming.

“There was a kid that requested a pair of Nike Air Force shoes and this was his [big] wish,” Wayside Residential Director Tim Hagen said. “Seeing his face on Christmas morning was an amazing thing to see. [The kids] forget for that short moment that they’re in a residential program because [they just have] happiness in getting the gifts that they requested.”

The Wayside Gift Drive consists of endeavors from other individuals as well. The WMS students and administration try to contribute in any way that they can.

“From just sixth grade alone, I have gotten a few emails with questions as well as kids helping make and put up posters, which gives me lots of hope that we will get a lot of presents for the kids,” WMS student Christina Burt said. “Bo Morneweck, [Morneweck’s son,] and I made a slide about information on the Wayside Gift Drive, and it was put in the morning announcements so everyone could see it. Our principal also put a note in the Monday Minute to spread the information.”

The community’s involvement in the gift drive has led to a large impact on Wayside.

“Over the years, we usually end up with between 80 and 90 kids every year,” Morneweck said. “We end up with between $8,000-10,000 [worth of gifts] most years. People [anonymously] log on to [Wayside’s] Amazon [site] and [what they buy] ships directly to Wayside. It’s pretty much as selfless as it gets.”

Although there is no direct communication between the gift givers and the Wayside kids who receive the gift, the sentiment is shared through a gift-wrapping process.

“We take some middle school kids and go over [to Wayside] a week or so before Christmas,” Morneweck said. “The staff at Wayside piles everything up and we go to wrap everything. It’s really fun to go and see everything in one place [and] have our own kids involved. In Wayland, we are a pretty privileged community. So, for our kids to have a reminder that life isn’t like this for everybody has been very valuable.”

Not only does the Wayside Gift Drive impact the kids at Wayside, but it also allows the organizers and the Wayland community to practice kindness during the giving season.

“It [has] restored my faith in humanity,” Morneweck said. “It [is] so nice to see how generous and giving our community can be. It breaks my heart when I see the [kids’] lists, [but] it’s totally gratifying when it all gets bought up.”