The YWCA of Fort Dodge is asking the community for help to bring holiday cheer to the facility’s residents, clients and staff this Christmas.

The YWCA houses women who are going through the facility’s inpatient substance abuse treatment, and many of the women have children with them. A few years ago, when staff were looking for ways to provide as normal of a Christmas as possible for these women and their families, they decided to ask the community to “adopt” the families.

For the women who are going through the YWCA’s residential substance abuse treatment program, their top priority is maintaining their sobriety and completing their treatment program. Through all this, it can be hard to give their children a “normal” Christmas, YWCA Executive Director Nici George said.

“Most of our families, they are single families and they have very little support,” she said. “They don’t have money to buy gifts. They may be working, but they don’t have money to buy gifts, so by being adopted, that’s the only way that their kids are going to experience gifts.”

Last year, the YWCA was able to adopt out 69 families and individuals for Christmas, George said. This year, she’s hoping to increase that number to 75.

It’s not just the residential families and individuals who are “adopted” at the YWCA. George matches donors with staff members and this year hopes to include some of the outpatient clients the organization works with.

“Our staff is just underpaid and overworked so a lot of them depend on a little support for Christmas,” George said. “We want to build the program every year and every year we have more and more families.”

Any individual, family, organization or business who would like to adopt one of the YWCA families can send an email with their family size preference — anywhere from a single individual to a mom with five kids — to George at nicig@ywcafd.org and she will send the resident or family’s Christmas wish list.

Because the facility’s census changes, there is no deadline to sign up to adopt, George said. The more signups they get, the more clients they can help.

Presents can be wrapped, but are not required to be. But each gift needs to be labeled with who it’s for. Gifts need to be dropped off at the YWCA, 826 First Ave. N., by Dec. 21.

George said she’s in awe of the generosity the community has shown with this project over the years.

“It’s amazing how many presents [the families] get,” she said. “They are immensely grateful for anything even if it’s one toy or one gift card, whatever it is, they are very thankful.”

Being able to provide presents for the kids to unwrap at Christmas also helps bring some “normalcy” for the families during the holidays, George added.