However, there’s several that don’t. Those letters instead get forwarded to the Operation Santa organization where they are uploaded to a website for people around America to adopt.

One coach at the State University of New York at Fredonia, Astrid Escobar, got caught up in reading some of the devastating letters of last year and decided she wanted to help. Pairing up with marketing junior Melena DeBoe, whom she helped with getting an absentee ballot this year, the two started working on this project.

“This year we thought why don’t we see if we can get the school onboard with a collective effort,” Escobar, head coach of men’s and women’s swimming and diving team at the university, told the OBSERVER. “What we’ll do is we’ll go online and we’ll adopt some of these letters. We thought we’d set our goal at like $500, but it has started to take on a life of its own.”

She started receiving emails from students and faculty asking how to donate to help and the grass-roots effect took over. She and DeBoe now have $800 made of simple $1 and $2 donations.

Astrid Escobar

“The beauty of this fundraiser that we’ve done is it really is just small dollar donations,” Escobar said. “It’s just been students and faculty sending over $1 or $2. So we kind of dubbed it the Big Blue Family Operation Santa. We wrote a letter that we sent out to different members of the community and we basically said that Fredonia’s mission statement explicitly says that ‘we want to improve the world through community engagement.’ This is an awesome way to give back to the community.”

Escobar and DeBoe are looking now to help with the local community itself and have devised a system with the Fredonia post office.

“It is every individual’s responsibility to put back into the world the equivalent of what they take out of it,” DeBoe added. “Astrid and I have created an opportunity for the Big Blue Family to come together and make a difference in the world, simply by donating one dollar. Every little bit helps I can promise you that.”

“What we were hoping is that if there are people in Fredonia or Dunkirk, in the local area, if they could just write a letter, especially being impacted by COVID, we could help,” Escobar continued.

Letters can be dropped at the Operation Santa mailbox at the Fredonia post office no later than Friday, Dec. 18, but write on them “Santa, care of his elves” so that the post office knows to put those aside for the college rather than forward to the main organization.

“There are families right now that are struggling so much right here and we may not even know it,” Escobar added. “I want to get this message out. People can drop the letters off and we can get them. We’re all connected in some way, if people really need something we want to provide that help.”