Christmas in July & New Year Anticipation!

Christmas in July & New Year Anticipation!

When others think of “Christmas in July,” Frank Sinatra’s Christmas album may come to mind. For us at DeeCilla, it’s even more special. During the month of July, we have quite a few things to celebrate. Our most active operations begin to wrap up during this month, in addition we celebrate our Founder’s Day on the 10th! Most importantly, we recognize the birthday of our beloved founder Shawanda! Though she always puts DeeCilla’s festivities at the forefront, we must take the time to honor Shawanda for all she’s done for fellow survivors.

At its core, our Christmas in July is a day of self care. In addition to this we make it a point to highlight the progress of our survivors and generally recognize how far women have come as it relates to the issues we help combat. DeeCilla receives donations from local businesses to contribute toward self-care activities for our survivors. Using these resources we are able to treat our residents to manicures, hair treatments, massages and things of that nature! This is all in an effort to demonstrate things our survivors should make more time for. It’s important to treat ourselves and recognize how far we have come in every capacity!

To further instill this, we also prepare and provide gift baskets with leisure products and gift cards to encourage these activities. At DeeCilla, we want to introduce our survivors to these practices because it is healthy to make them routine and show them it’s crucial to take time for themselves. Our beloved founder Shawanda recognizes these things as some of the most important things someone can do to help themselves along, even if the progress is marginal.

With our Christmas in July comes the general wrap up of our operative year. Though we continue with our efforts to help survivors, our work generally slows down over the summer. Not to worry though, we’ll kick off our new operative year this fall! I leave you with excitement and anticipation for what’s to come in our new year…maybe a grand surprise? Stay tuned!