Photo by Deb Gau Julie Fier and Pam Rose helped roll out a cart stacked with wrapped presents headed out to area families in need on Thursday morning. Avera employees from Marshall, Tyler and Granite Falls all worked together to shop for close to 60 families.

MARSHALL — Gifts of all shapes and sizes were stacked up at Avera Marshall Medical Center on Thursday morning. Many were packed inside bigger cardboard boxes for delivery, but one or two were big enough that it took two people to carry them to waiting vehicles outside.

“I just want to know what it is,” one Southwest Health and Human Services employee said, as she helped lift a long rectangular box covered in wrapping paper.

The presents were headed to a total of 57 families across a six-county area, as part of the Christmas Families Project. For more than 10 years running, employees at Avera and Southwest Health and Human Services have teamed up to help provide holiday gifts for people in need.

“It seems to grow every year,” said Cindy Nelson, social services division director at SWHHS. As part of the project, SWHHS employees work with families in their service area who might be in need of presents or other items around the holidays.

“Families will give us a wish list. Sometimes it’s for food, sometimes it’s clothing, or a Christmas tree,” Nelson said. Winter coats and boots are another popular wish list item.

Teams of area Avera employees work together to donate and wrap the items on families’ wish list, said Stacy Neubeck, communications partner at Avera Marshall. Sometimes a team will have members donate to the project and designate one person to do the shopping while other teams split up the work, Neubeck said.

This year, teams from Avera facilities in Marshall, Tyler and Granite Falls all participated, she said. The result was the long row of wrapped gifts lined up along a hallway at Avera Marshall. Avera employees rolled out cartloads of presents sorted into groups by family, and helped load them in the vehicles of SWHHS employees.

The packages were then on their way to households in Lincoln, Lyon, Redwood, Pipestone, Murray and Rock counties. Nelson estimated that a total of more than 100 people across the region would receive gifts.