Aivres Community Partnership Spotlight: Granting Holiday Wishes and Spreading Joy with Family Giving Tree

This holiday season, Aivres was pleased to work with Family Giving Tree to bring holiday cheer to the most underserved members of the Bay Area community.

Wish drives: fulfilling an in-need individual’s holiday wish

Aivres partnered with Family Giving Tree to hold a Wish holiday drive, a program in which volunteers can fulfill specific wishes from in-need individuals for a gift they would like to receive for the holidays. The organization partners with over 300 social service agencies to reach some of the most vulnerable communities in the bay, collecting the wish lists of children, adults, and seniors in greatest need of care and comfort. In addition to completing the drive and fulfilling all the Wish cards received, Aivres matched the total volunteer contribution to provide gifts for over a hundred individuals, including much-needed essentials like winter coats, blankets, personal hygiene items, art supplies, and educational tools.

About Family Giving Tree

The Family Giving Tree is the largest holiday gift and backpack donation program in California, recognized by Charity Navigator as a 4-star nonprofit organization. It started as a San Jose State MBA project to help in-need children and has since grown to become a well-respected nonprofit serving the San Francisco Bay Area for over 31 years.

Many low-income families in the Bay Area struggle with tight living budgets, and often cannot afford to partake in family traditions and activities like gift-giving during the holidays or getting kids supplies for school. Family Giving Tree aims to alleviate the societal pressures of income inequality and poverty by uplifting children through gifts of joy and learning in the form of holiday and school supply donation drives. Working with partnerships with businesses, groups, and thousands of volunteers, Family Giving Tree has served over two million children and individuals throughout the greater Bay Area.

Why we chose Family Giving Tree

Even though the Bay Area is one of the country’s wealthiest areas, its poverty rate is higher than the national average: over 800,000 local residents live at or below the poverty line, and one out of five children live in poverty. While the technology sector has undoubtedly brought great economic wealth to many people and regions in the Bay, it also brought with it high costs of living, an unaffordable housing market, and extreme income disparity. As a tech company in Silicon Valley, we acknowledge our responsibility to do our part to help those marginalized and displaced by the impacts of tech. In addition, as a company of many individuals who enjoyed the privilege of higher education, Aivres strongly believes in creating better pathways to academic success for children, starting with supporting and providing basic needs to children in under-resourced communities.