Mom struggling in new country is grateful for support from Goodfellows

Sometimes, as Magaly says, the answer is to “bring happiness to homes.”

The Goodfellow Fund has been doing exactly that for more than a century and is once again this year. The Star-Telegram charity is providing $100 gift cards from Old Navy to children from families in need.

Magaly is a young mother from Mexico who is struggling to make life work economically. She has a happy family.

Like many in her situation, however, she has to make hard decisions, and after bills are paid — sometimes if — there simply isn’t money left over for presents. The thing she wants most is happiness for her children, especially during the holidays, when life can be harsh for families with financial challenges.

“I was a single mother of three grown children. And I was able to pull them through. Then I met an American man and we live together in a good relationship,” she said. “We have always been strong and we raise our children well.”

It’s not easy surviving in a new country, and sometimes help is necessary, even when people are working hard every day. Magaly said she is grateful for Goodfellows and the relief it provides to families such as hers.

“They are thinking about the children of the future,” she said. “I am grateful for this program that helps our communities.”

About the Goodfellow Fund

The story on the Goodfellow website describes its beginning as an offshoot of the first newspaper charity drive in the United States, started by the Chicago Tribune on Dec. 10, 1909. A Chicago city attorney wrote a letter challenging his friends to donate the money they would have spent on holiday partying to charity.

A couple of years later, the Advertising Club of Fort Worth staged the first local Goodfellow campaign. On the day after Thanksgiving in 1912, Publisher Amon G. Carter brought the tradition to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

To donate online and find out more, visit goodfellowfundfw.com/donate. To donate with a check, send checks made out to the Goodfellow Fund to P.O. Box 149, Fort Worth, TX, 76101.