By Carol Anders Correspondent
PLYMOUTH — Thanks to a project initiated by four members of the 2008-09 Leadership Marshall County class, companies, businesses and individuals may find it easier to locate a needy family to help during the Christmas holidays.

Leadership Marshall County is sponsored by the Marshall County United Way and the Community Foundation.
Jack Kelley, Jeff Kutch, Reid Gault and Niki Clemons formed a partnership with Marshall County public schools to help identify low-income families through the Adopt-A-Family program.
During registration at this year’s school year at several of the schools, parents and guardians of students who qualified for the free and reduced lunch program had an opportunity to fill out an application for the Christmas assistance program.
According to Clemons, who works for 1st Source Bank, she had difficulty locating families who needed help last year. She said, “All of our branches wanted to participate, but it was hard to find names of those in need.”
Gault said all Marshall County schools received applications; however, the schools could decide to keep the applications within the school and locate assistance on their own, they could keep some and refer others to Adopt-A Family, or they could give all applications collected to the program.
Gault said the applications that they have in hand will be kept at the United Way office located in the Key Bank building on North Michigan Street.  Those wishing to adopt a family can pick up the needed information at the United Way office. The group has set Dec. 1 as the adoption deadline.
Beginning Dec. 2, all ap-plications will be re-viewed to determine if there are any families who have not been adopted.
Chris Eberly, president of the Leadership Mar-shall County board, said they have a list of “last-minute angels” who have offered to help as backups for any families not adopted. “However, we still may not be able to help everyone,” said Eberly.
Gault said, “Our vision was to help the kids of Marshall County and to get more businesses and individuals involved.” He added, “We strongly be-lieve if the process is more efficient and easier to use the participation from the community will increase and more families will benefit from the generosity of our community.”