Students are instructed to grab the bags from the bottom, as some might be heavy.
St. Ann Catholic School is sending 195 foster children holiday gifts this year.
The school is continuing its more than 30-year holiday tradition of participating in the Red Bags KC program, which was started in 1984 by Daniel Jacobs, a former St. Ann Catholic Church parishioner and foster child himself.
St. Ann students and families collect toys, stuffed animals, games, clothing and personal care items in the run up to the day in early December when those items are stuffed into Santa-like read bags and delivered.
Tammy Laudan and Linda Cosgrove, Red Bag co-chairs, organize the annual red bag drive at St. Ann.
Laudan says the phrase “red bag week” is all it takes to get the ball rolling on donations.
“We’ve been doing it for so long, all I do is send a letter out that it’s red bag week, and the next day I get like 30 requests [for family adoptions],” Laudan said.
Eighth graders at St. Ann fill each distinctive red bag with gift-wrapped presents and load the bags onto a delivery truck.
Here’s what “red bag day” at St. Ann looked like this year:
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The pre-packaged red bags fill the halls of St. Ann.Eighth grade students line up in front of the school to get directions on how to load the truck.Students check in with one of the two co-chairs to cross each red bag and corresponding child off the list.After checking in, St. Ann students start taking bags — or presents, like the one above — onto the truck.The entire school helps with shopping for the red bags and adopting families, but eighth graders are the ones who get to help make the red bags and load them.Students like Sophia Nguyen, above, look forward to red bag week — and more importantly, to being the eighth graders who can load the truck up. “I’m happy that I get to help out other people because Christmas is a really important holiday to me,” Nguyen said.As eighth graders bring bags to the truck, some helpers start stacking the bags to ensure all can fit in the U-Haul.After the truck is loaded, students gather around for a group picture.The truck will take the red bags to the Ball Center in Olathe. From there, the red bags will be delivered to social workers on Saturday, Dec. 4. Social workers will deliver the right bag to the right foster home so each child gets it. Above, Laudan (left) and Cosgrove (right) with the filled truck.
👋 Hi! I’m Juliana Garcia, and I cover Prairie Village and northeast Johnson County for the Johnson County Post.
I grew up in Roeland Park and graduated from Shawnee Mission North before going on to the University of Kansas, where I wrote for the University Daily Kansan and earned my bachelor’s degree in journalism. Prior to joining the Post in 2019, I worked as an intern at the Kansas City Business Journal.
