WMPD makes holiday donation

WMPD makes holiday donation

Partnership with Christians 4 Kids helps CASA grant Christmas wishes

news@theeveningtimes.co m West Memphis’ finest just made Christmas for a whole bunch of children.

The department’s gift ensured Christians 4 Kids could provide the wish list for every child in foster care in the county.

Christians 4 Kids is a nonprofit supporting children in foster care. Sharon Goode heads up the Christmas drive for the group and spoke about the year round mission of the group.

“We also love on our Division of Children and Family services,” said Goode.

“Our goal is to make sure that when foster children go into a home they have a back pack full of essential needs, like clothing sized for their age, bottles, formula, diapers. We make sure the have a Bible so that they always have the word of God there with them.”

This season the focus of Christians 4 Kids is filling the holiday wish lists for foster care kids. Fund raising success made sure every foster child wish was handled.

“This year we facilitated with Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) for children to fulfill Christmas list for children,” said Goode. “In Crittenden County there was 112 children in foster care. Everyone of them made a Christmas list and every one of them will be fulfilled after the police donation today.”

Captain Joe Baker and Sgt. Jennifer Welsh presented Goode with $500 on behalf of the entire WMPD. Baker explained the fund raising to make Christmas brighter for local children.

“We made this $500 donation to fill the Christmas lists for all the children,” said Baker. “This is part of our Shop With a Cop, some of it was private donations, part of it was a Walmart grant.”

A first time fund raising effort had big results and was loads for the of fun for police officers.

“We did no shave November with the officers ,” said Baker. “They had to pay a $100 donation to grow a beard and sponsor one child for Shop With a Cop. We raised so much money we went over our 60 kids goal at Steudlein. We went over our goal so we are happy to be able to help Christians 4 Kids.”

The WMPD raised $6,000 altogether for Christmas.

“Evidently we have a lot of cops that don’t like to shave,” said Sgt. Welsh.

Everything we raised is going back to a kid somewhere for Christmas; there is no administrative cost to this,” said Baker.

The WMPD planned for even bigger returns next year.

“The chief and I have already talked about next year,” said Baker. “We have the potential to do this twice a year. We could do a significant fund raiser every three months just on the no-shave event.”

If you’d like to donate your time or make a contribution to Christians 4 Kids contact Sharon Goode at

(901) 606-4667.

By John Rech