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Macy's Gives

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Macy's Gives

How Macy’s and Make-A-Wish came together to help this seven year-old meet Santa

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Seven year-old Pastor knows that simple joys make life worthwhile. He loves visits from Santa. And he loves a good hamburger.

However, unlike most kids his age, Pastor is bravely battling leukemia. After a year of doctors’ visits and painful cancer treatments, Pastor and his family needed a break. That’s when Macy’s and Make-A-Wish® stepped in to help lighten up Pastor’s year.

Make-A-Wish is a nonprofit that helps fulfill the wishes of children with critical illnesses. While some children wish for celebrity meetups or trips abroad, Pastor’s wish was specific and sweet: he wanted to meet Santa for a hamburger near his home in Sacramento.

To make it happen, Pastor’s local Make-A-Wish chapter reached out to its longtime partner Macy’s to arrange Santa’s journey from the North Pole to California.

Pastor arrived at the store in a white stretch limousine and was welcomed by smiling elves surrounded by hundreds of red and white balloons. Inside, Santa greeted Pastor from a silver throne inside a winter wonderland packed with oversized candy canes, golden gift boxes, and evergreens decked out in Christmas lights. Together they picked out ornaments from the Macy’s holiday display, then left the store together to visit Santa’s reindeer. After their big day, the pair feasted on burgers and hot chocolate with family and friends.

“When we heard about Pastor’s sweet wish to meet Santa, we quickly thought of our partners at Macy’s and what a wonderful tie-in to the annual Macy’s Believe letter-writing campaign,” said Michele Sanders, Vice President of Strategic Communications for Make-A-Wish. “Pastor, his entire family, and all involved were in awe of the ‘winter wonderland’ created just for him and Santa.”

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Remote learning sets kids back an average of 2 months. Here’s what Macy’s and RIF are doing to help underserved students who are falling behind.

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When almost all of the nation's schoolchildren were forced to embark upon remote learning, everyone struggled to stay afloat: families, students, and teachers. Despite the heroic efforts of educators and families, remote learning presented significant challenges for students, particularly those of lower socioeconomic status.

It's not yet clear the significant learning challenges all students faced last year and the resulting impact as many students return to in person learning this Fall. Preliminary data suggests significant learning loss - particularly among children of color.

The ability to read and write is the foundation upon which an education is built, and research shows students of color and those in high-poverty communities fell even further behind during remote learning than their peers. For example, the sudden shift to remote schooling in Spring 2020 set White students back by 1-3 months in math, while students of color lost 3-5 months of learning.

This systemic inequity that has existed in the American education system for decades has disproportionately left students of color behind, and the COVID-19 school closures multiplied this challenge, impacting a generation of already at-risk youth. Disparities in access to computers, home internet connections, and direct instruction from teachers, all have played a role in this crisis since the start of the pandemic. Even prior to the pandemic, 65% of children in the U.S. were not reading at the proficient level, and 2/3 of U.S. children living in poverty don't have a children's book in their home.

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Back to school shopping? Round up your purchase at Macy’s and help boost literacy in underserved communities.

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This year, your back-to-school shopping can have a positive impact for local families, and all you have to do is round up at checkout. But first, let's talk about America's literacy problem. Did you know that two-thirds of children living in poverty do not own books?

For these children, schools and local libraries are often the only place where books are easily accessible. And what about the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on these under-resourced communities as children were learning remotely? The experience of a child living in an impoverished community is vastly different from the experience of other children. There has been a 27-point gap in literacy proficiency between Black students and their White counterparts for almost thirty years. The pandemic will likely only worsen these numbers.

The ability to read and write is something many of us take for granted (you're reading this article right now!), but according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, sixty-five percent of American 4th graders read below grade level. This sobering statistic translates to approximately 8,000 students dropping out of school every single day. Low literacy rates disproportionately affect poor, underserved areas — students drop out of school, get locked out of the job market due to a lack of education, and the cycle of poverty continues.

Simply put, inequitable access to literacy resources and support is a major part of what perpetuates a cycle of poverty that makes it difficult to succeed academically and ultimately in the workplace.

Literacy isn't only about classroom education — it plays a vital role in transforming children into socially and civically engaged citizens. It means being able to keep up with current events, communicate effectively, pass a driving test, and understand the issues that are shaping our world. It enables us to self-advocate, understand finances, and make better decisions regarding healthcare, housing, and nutrition. The fact that twenty-five million children in the U.S. cannot read proficiently is alarming because every child deserves equitable access to books and education, and we must all come together to address this crisis and make a real change. That statistic doesn't bode well for our future.

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