Published: November 01, 2009 11:11 pm      

Hundreds decorate trees during We Care event

Lights flickered on, one string at a time.

It was a domino effect as 80 Christmas trees lit up from one end of the Kokomo Mall’s main hallway to the other.

Hundreds of people swarmed the illuminated sylvan citadel Sunday evening as they decorated the artificial Christmas trees.

Halloween may have been Saturday, but by Sunday, the crowd at the mall traded in their trick-or-treat candy for Christmas cookies during the Trim-A-Tree Festival. The event is We Care’s second largest fundraiser, and it is the precursor to its largest — the December telethon.

The trees decorated Sunday will remain on display in the mall the next two weeks before the nonprofit auctions them off Nov. 15.

Mariesa Skogland, the event’s organizer, said the auction raised about $42,000 last year. On average, the trees sold for about $1,100, she said.

We Care will funnel the proceeds to five agencies, which include the Kokomo Rescue Mission, the Salvation Army, Goodfellows, Bona Vista Rehabilitative Services and the Holiday Gift Lift program at the Mental Health Association of Howard County.

The organization has not set a fundraising goal for this year.

“We just are grateful for whatever the community is able to donate,” Skogland said.

The 80 groups involved signed up for the event in August. Within an hour of registration, Skogland said, the roster maxed out.

“It’s overwhelming,” she said. “It’s great we’ve had this many people in Kokomo wanting to participate.”

While the participants work to raise money for We Care, they also compete among themselves for a People’s Choice award.

Buckets will line the hallway at Kokomo Mall, each paired with a tree. For one penny, people can cast votes for their favorites. Last year, the voting raised an additional $7,000, Skogland said.

“We get some groups that are pretty competitive,” she said. “Some of the buckets can go up to $1,500.”

Each tree has a name, which serves as a central theme for the trees.

Some teams used their trees as a way to communicate messages.

The Howard County Recycling District joined the fundraiser this year with its tree, “Treecycle for a Green Christmas.”

Staff members of the district decorated it with hand-made crafts made from reused items brought into their office.

The three-woman team made ornaments from newspaper, old cell phones and CD cases. Multi-colored LED lights also lit up the tree.

“Some of the stuff people brought in, I was like ‘What am I going to do with this?’” recycling district director Mikki Jeffers said as she held a gold-colored star made of an egg carton.

Other participants went with a more traditional message.

A group of artists from Art Works, a Kokomo Art Association cooperative gallery in the mall, painted birds onto ornaments to focus on their theme, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”

Tamara Jarvis, the team’s leader, said the group took the title straight from Biblical scripture.

“All of us paint birds ... and we wanted to do something where we all participated artistically,” Jarvis said, adding about half of the gallery’s artists participated Sunday.

• Daniel Human is a Kokomo Tribune staff writer. He can be reached at 765-454-8570 or at daniel.human@kokomotribune.com.