By Addie Hunsaker | [email protected]

The Christmas Box International was created by Utah writer Richard Paul Evans and his wife about 25 years ago after Evans' book “The Christmas Box” became a national bestseller.

According to Celeste Edmunds, executive director of The Christmas Box International, “He [Evans] and his wife decided they wanted to give money back that they had made from a couple of books he'd written already. The premise of the Christmas Box is based on the loss of childhood so they knew that they wanted their money to go to children, but they weren't sure the best way to do that. Richard Evans asked his father, a social worker at the time, ‘What's the best thing we can do with this money?’ He said, ‘Honestly, I don't know. How about we ask the dean of the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Utah?’ And so we held a statewide conference at the University of Utah and invited all the Child Welfare officials in the state that we could find. We asked literally, ‘What is the single most important thing we can do for Utah's at-risk children?’ At the end of that conference, the answer was there's no place for children to go when they're removed from their homes because of abuse, neglect, abandonment, trafficking or facing homelessness.” 

The Christmas Box International aims to serve adolescents experiencing such hardships by temporarily providing short-term housing solutions in a safe environment with proper food and shelter, until a rehousing plan can be properly created with the involvement of judges and caseworkers. Their year-round programs provide access to emergency children’s shelters and, as of last year, 13 resource rooms in DCFS offices across the state with more to come. 

“About half [of the kids] go home under a safety plan with the state….The other half go into foster care or stay with another family member. Sometimes, that may not work and they have the Christmas Box to come back to but more times than not because time [for planning] has been given that is the right placement for a child. We just celebrated 25 years of defending 125,000 Children in 2021…and successfully keep an average of 39 sibling groups together per month,” Edmunds said. 

The Christmas Box also aims to smooth the transition for youth from foster care into adulthood with their Milestone program, which has an 80% success rate. Youth graduating from the foster care system that have been “identified as having high potential for success” at living independently are taken into the program for up to two years. 

The Christmas Box also donates resources like hygiene products to countries such as Kenya, Peru and Ecuador. The organization's global outreach can be attributed to surplus donations that then get distributed between The Christmas Box’s 60 community and international partnerships. 

The organization has many opportunities for volunteer work including the Help Fix Our Houses program, in which volunteers can help renovate rooms, such as bedrooms or classrooms, any of the three houses in Utah including the home in Salt Lake. Local youth may also get involved in the Kids Helping Kids program which allows schools and their students to form a fundraiser using creative ideas that can also be found on their website such as Pay to Cosplay or Battle of the Bands.  

The Christmas Box also accepts donations and a current wish list of items needed can be found on their website at www.thechristmasbox.org.