David Treadwell is executive director of the Central Union Mission, which, at 127 years old, is the oldest social service agency in the city. The agency has been doing Christmas gift drives for years, but has expanded its program this year to keep up with a sharp increase in demand because of a still-limping economy and high poverty rates in the District. How long has Central Union Mission been giving gifts to children on Christmas?
We can trace it back to 1920 — we have pictures of Grace Coolidge with the children around 1920. We’ve been doing children’s work since 1917. We take 400 children to camp for free for a week in the summer. We do back-to-school, Easter and Christmas drives for children. We also have a long-term shelter program for men, and then we do food. Last year we gave away 400,000 bags of groceries and served 60,000 hot meals.
How many gifts [did] you give out this year?
About 3,000 — 1,000 to mission children, 2,000 to other nonprofits that don’t have the collective system we do. There’s a lot of partnerships.
When people think about the homeless, the image that comes to mind is not necessarily a child. Does the District have many homeless children?
The fastest-growing portion of the homeless in the District are children and families. It’s hard to pinpoint an exact number, but you can easily say there’s 1,000 homeless children on the street on any given night. Forty percent of the homeless in the District are children and families. And our concern is not just homeless children, but it’s also children in poverty. … A big part of our contribution is taking away the added burden of trying to provide Christmas for kids.
What do you personally get out of the Christmas gift drive?
We’re called by a Christian purpose for all of this, compelled by faith to serve the poor. It is our faith that guides us and directs us to do this.
– Aubrey Whelan
