Since 1996, The American Women’s Club of Luxembourg (AWCL) has been organizing and leading Gifts for Kids, a strictly volunteer-run charitable initiative to bring holiday presents to children living in Luxembourg foyers.

Businesses, schools, and organizations throughout Luxembourg display Christmas trees in prominent locations for their employees, students, or customers to select an ornament.  Each ornament has the gift wish of a real child who has chosen a toy from the Cactus Holiday Catalog.  Any individual who would like to fulfill a gift wish removes the ornament and does not buy the actual present but simply provides the funds for the purchase.  One hundred percent of funds raised go directly and solely to the purchase of gifts.  The AWCL arranges the buying of the gifts and delivers them before December 6th, St. Nicholas Day.  The night of December 5th, children leave their shoes outside their bedroom door in the hopes that St. Nicholas, or Kleeschen, will fill them with toys or sweets.  In 2022, Gifts for Kids filled the shoes of 1,214 children, the most ever.

Each year, the students at St. George's International School make beautiful handmade cards to accompany the gifts.  Presenting original and thoughtfully created cards from the children of the community to the children in the foyers is especially poignant.

Will you please help us fill more shoes in 2024?