Santa's Ride - holiday help for local refugees
On a cold and blustery day, hundreds of volunteers at six locations around the Des Moines area were on hand, armed and ready with clothing, supplies, food, and toys for local refugees this holiday season. Families stood outside in long lines huddled together, shivering under blankets at Brody Middle School, Carver Elementary School, and four apartment complexes in Des Moines and Urbandale on Saturday, December 9, 2023. Snow flew through the air. Cheerful volunteers handed out tickets to family members to “shop” for coats, boots, clothing, household supplies, and food at the annual event called Santa’s Ride. The wait was worth it as the excited children took turns posing for photos with Santa and selecting a brand-new toy to bring home.
Preparation time behind the scenes included days of community volunteers dropping off gently used items and ordering from an Amazon wish list, followed by more volunteers loading and unloading moving trucks. It was quite a task to gather items at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Des Moines and then divvy them up into six different loads for distribution.
Santa’s Ride is organized by a group called Des Moines Refugee Support. DMRS was founded in 2016 by director, Alison Hoeman. Hoeman, a longtime English as a Second Language teacher (both abroad and for Des Moines Public Schools), started Des Moines Refugee Support after seeing a need among her refugee students and their families. In 2022, Hoeman resigned from teaching to focus on supporting area refugees full-time.
The organization helps bridge the gaps for local refugee children and their families by providing resources, connections, and anything that makes their transition to life in Iowa a little bit easier. Monetary donations are used for many things such as city bus passes for middle and high school students to get to and from school and league fees for children to play soccer. It’s also used for gasoline and maintenance for vans to transport soccer players to practices and games and to take families to job interviews, English classes, and appointments. “We need money because transportation is the largest barrier that our families face. To help with this, we rent fifteen passenger vans, three to six at a time. Each van costs $300 a month and they get terrible gas mileage,” explained Hoeman.
The organization runs solely on donations and relies on over 1,000 volunteers in the metro area. Hoeman keeps in contact with her board of directors and volunteers through emails, text messages, and a private Facebook group. Events such as the Spring Free Store, the Back-To-School Free Store, and Santa’s Ride are held annually.
If you would like to volunteer, donate money or new or gently used goods (including household goods and furniture) to Des Moines Refugee Support, you can find more information on their public Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DSMRefugeeSupport, their website www.dsmrefugees.org, or by emailing Hoeman at alison@dsmrefugeesupport.org, volunteers@dsmrefugeesupport.org, and donations@dsmrefugees.org.
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