Giving to Others a Holiday Tradition at Yale Psychotherapy Development Center

Joanne Corvino and her colleagues in the Yale Psychotherapy Development Center (YPDC) don’t give each other gifts for the holidays, but don’t mistake them for Scrooges.

This year, like so many years before, they will follow their tradition of buying toys, clothing, gift cards, books, sporting equipment, and household necessities for people in need in the New Haven community.

The gifts will be wrapped during the center’s annual holiday party, then delivered to families who receive assistance from Christian Community Action (CCA), a local nonprofit organization that provides emergency and transitional housing, as well as other services, to people in need.

“It’s big and it’s exciting. It’s fun and it’s the giving. That’s really the important part,” said Corvino, a research associate at the center and 31-year Yale employee who helped start the gift giving tradition nearly three decades ago after fire ravaged her own home. “This isn’t to make ourselves feel better. It’s to help others.”

Corvino said her family “lost everything” in 1993 when their house burned. She had recently begun to work for the late Kathleen (Kathy) Carroll, PhD, a clinical scientist who founded YPDC, and the center was housed in a building on Sylvan Avenue.

Word quickly spread that the Corvinos were in need, and donations began to pour in.

“People brought me things that I didn’t even know that I needed. It was absolutely, absolutely incredible the generosity,” she said. “It was so meaningful to realize there was a community of people around me who cared whether they knew me or not.”

The following December, when it came time to plan the office holiday party, everyone agreed it was unnecessary to give each other gifts. Rather, donations were gathered for a charity in New Haven. The next year, the center began to work with CCA and was assigned a family to buy for. More people asked if they could help and that enabled the center, which is now headed by Brian Kiluk, PhD, to adopt even more families and children.

“It’s a pretty tight system we have,” said Charla Nich, who began working at the center in the early 1990s and was among those who started the gift giving program. “Joanne contacts CCA and tells them how many families we’d like to serve. They provide a list with the child’s first name and anything they wish for the holidays. We get their sizes for clothes and shoes. Then from that list Joanne puts out a call for action.”

More than 50 people buy for the families now. “New people come and go (from the center) all the time, but everyone always participates,” Nich said. “It’s a beautiful thing. We want them to have their best holiday possible.”

This year the center has adopted one family but may be assigned a second: a mom and four children. Corvino said each gift recipient receives up to a dozen presents to open, and she personally delivers the gifts each year when the youngest children aren’t around to preserve the magic of Santa Claus.

“(The families) are floored. I think that they’re expecting it to be impersonal like here you go, bye, but they are so incredibly warm. They are so incredibly grateful,” she said. “It’s definitely overwhelming.”

Five years ago, when Corvino was involved in the local Rotary club, she was on a committee that interviewed a family whose child wanted to participate in a youth exchange program. At the end of the interview a woman asked Corvino if she was familiar with CCA. Corvino said she was, and the woman told Corvino she recognized her.

“She said, ‘I will never forget you. You came to my house when I was 15 and brought us Christmas presents,’” Corvino said.

She said the experience helped change the family’s life; the 15 year old graduated from high school and college, and then earned a graduate degree and is thriving.

Through the years the center has served 42 families and 189 people, according to Corvino, whose daughters participated by making the gift drive their high school senior capstone projects.

This year the center’s holiday party will be on December 20, and like usual people will come with unwrapped gifts and gift cards for the families. Food will be served, music will play, and the employees will get busy wrapping and tagging gifts, and then sending Corvino on her way to make another family’s Christmas brighter.

Nich said the program provides hope to parents and children, and always helps focus the center’s employees on the real importance of the holidays.

“Everybody can do something. Even if you give a little it can have a big impact,” she said. “A lot of people have safety nets and there are people who don’t. We just want to provide a sense of hope to parents and children.”