This November, Wendy Phillips, a REALTOR® with Prudential Sussex Realty in North Vancouver and the brains behind Operation Gift Basket, collected and purchased gloves, toques, socks, scarves, toiletries and Christmas candy with the help of friends, colleagues, and clients, as she does every year.
Assisted by fellow REALTORS® at Prudential Sussex Realty, Wendy prepared just under 300 beautifully wrapped boxes of goodies. A local moving company, Econo Moving and Storage, donated a truck and boxes to help with the transport. The gift baskets were then delivered to a number of North Shore and Vancouver shelters, recovery houses, and charities, including Lookout North Shore, Lookout East Side, North Shore Crisis Services Society, North Shore Women’s Centre, and the Turning Point North Shore, Vancouver, and Richmond.
Wendy came up with the concept for Operation Gift Basket in 2008 after being asked to donate unopened, unused toiletries to an acquaintance who was delivering them to a women’s shelter.
“I had a big pile of stuff and decided to package them up into baskets instead of just handing them over as separate items,” explains Wendy. “When I delivered the baskets to the woman who was organizing the effort, she took me into a back room that was piled high with toiletries and asked if I could package those up too. Though I wasn’t able to help with it that year, I decided to put more time and effort in the following year and polled my friends and family, and as the years went on, needed more hands to handle the growing number of baskets and boxes that were being prepared. Each year we get a little more streamlined.”
