Such is the sight each week at Sunday Friends, a program that provides services to homeless and low-income families in the South Bay. Like other programs, Sunday Friends is a nonprofit organization that depends largely on contributions and volunteers--many of whom come from Los Gatos. But unlike other programs, Sunday Friends has participants "work" for the services they receive and always puts the stress on academics.

One should not expect a free handout of food, clothing and toys at Sunday Friends. Participants share in the chores, such as setting up tables, preparing food and cleaning up. For this, and for writing "thank-you" letters to donors and getting the correct answers on math problems or Spanish-to-English flash cards, individuals earn tickets that they put toward the purchase of toys, clothes and other items at the Treasure Chest, the organization's general store.

Sunday Friends runs year-round, but more recently, it celebrated the holiday season by having family members purchase Christmas gifts with the tickets earned and wrap them for each other.

"What's key to us is that we don't treat our families as needy. What we do is make it possible for them to give to each other with a lot of self-respect and pride," says Janis Baron, Sunday Friends founder and a Los Gatos resident.

Baron recounts one incident where an 11-year-old boy saved up his tickets for an entire month. "He did everything he could to earn tickets," she says. Volunteers began wondering what the boy was saving the tickets for, but they soon got their answer. Using all of his "savings," the boy bought a baby stroller for another woman in the shelter who was pregnant.

"When kids are given an opportunity to earn what they need, they not only stop being so needy, generosity comes out," Baron says.

Individuals who decide not to spend all their tickets can deposit their earnings at the "bank" and save them for another day. Whatever the decision, the point is to teach participants about working hard to earn buying power and managing one's finances.

"It's very nice that they have so many different types of activities that teach self-esteem, to be responsible, money-management skills and social skills," says Brandon Connelly, youth adviser for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Los Gatos, whose group prepared the fruit salad for Sunday Friends participants one recent weekend.

Helping him cut up the fruit for the salad and serving the snacks were the children in the program. Earlier, the kids made fresh-squeezed orange juice--one of the first things done each Sunday.

Besides teaching individuals the value of hard work and money management, Baron makes it a point to stress proper nutrition. The orange juice and fruit salads are examples of simple snacks served at Sunday Friends that don't require added sugar.

To offset operational expenditures, Sunday Friends participants help tend a garden at Lowell Elementary School in San Jose. In return, they are allowed to pick the fruits and vegetables, which they use to make snacks.

The organization has taken up other cost-saving strategies. To this day, Baron continues to work out of her home to avoid overhead costs and relies on the roughly 2,000 volunteers who walk through the doors each year--including some who formerly participated in the program. With a $20,000 annual budget, Sunday Friends relies heavily on donated food and art supplies. The organization also uses a donated station wagon that's nearly 20 years old to pick up supplies.

"We make do with a lot of what's given," says Ken Nead, who's worked for Sunday Friends for more than three years.

Much of the money that is collected goes toward purchasing diapers, phone cards, toiletries, basic school supplies and other practical items to stock the Treasure Chest.

Using her own money to start the program seven years ago, Baron, a former engineer for Apple and Intel, purchased about $100 in supplies, while her son printed out tickets on the family's computer. Thus began the Sunday Friends program of rewarding individuals for hard work.

As the program grew, Baron realized the need to move out of a shelter, where most of the participating families were in transit. Wishing to find a permanent home, Sunday Friends moved to Lowell Elementary School just a little over a year ago.

Even with the change in location, Baron did not miss a beat in providing her services. The organization has kept the program running for more than 350 consecutive weeks. The consistency in the program is crucial, Baron says, because "many of our children don't have a lot they can count on."

As its name suggests, Sunday Friends operates each Sunday. Though the program does not officially start until 2 p.m., some families arrive by 11 a.m. to start picking up trash from the field and playground, Baron says. Individuals earn one ticket for each piece of garbage they collect.

Nead is an avid believer in having families earn their purchasing powers.

"The children work to earn the tickets, and they buy to get what they want," he says. "They take it very seriously, even to the point where some parents will do jobs that we need done to run the organization. Parents will come here, and they'll eagerly work."

One of the most successful activities to date is letter writing--an activity that pays participants 30 tickets. Baron shares stories of children who detested writing but eventually gained confidence in their writing abilities.

"Over and over we saw kids who didn't see themselves as writers change their identity of themselves," she says.

One woman comes each weekend and folds used clothes that she sets on a table and makes presentable. These clothes are free to anyone who wants them. For her work in folding the clothes, the woman earns tickets, which she uses to purchase supplies for her baby.

Merchandise in the store ranges from new jeans and personal toiletries to picture frames, school supplies and toys for different ages. But the most popular items for sale are diapers and baby wipes.

Jeronimo Evelca, a mother of three, has been coming to Sunday Friends for three months. Being able to find practical items in the Treasure Chest helps her save about $50 per month. Besides the cost-saving benefits, what Evelca loves about the program is that it teaches valuable lessons to participants.

"My children learn how to interact with people, and they actually learn how to be good shoppers," she says via a translator.

When the children are taken into the store to do their shopping, volunteers accompany each child and make sure they don't spend more than they can afford. The volunteer chaperones are instructed to turn the shopping experience into a math lesson for these children, asking them to add up the costs of their merchandise and to subtract that from the total number of tickets they've earned.

"We're teaching them money management; we're teaching them decision-making," Baron tells the volunteers in their orientation session before leading the shoppers into the store.

Sunday Friends organizers set rigid rules that no one can take home an item unless they have enough tickets to purchase it. This way, children learn to set priorities about what they wish to buy and to save up tickets so that they can someday afford to make large purchases.

While the program is designed to teach practical life skills to participating families, it also becomes a learning experience for volunteers.

Los Gatos High School freshman Danielle Raz became involved with Sunday Friends through her school's Spanish and Interact clubs. While she has not helped translate "thank-you" letters from Spanish to English like some of her club members, Raz has been able to converse with some of the families.

"They're really happy to see people make an attempt to speak to them in their own language," she says.

Raz's fellow Spanish Club member, Jane Susskind, also appreciates the opportunity to practice her Spanish.

"You get the actual language from people who speak it every day. I got a chance to see how they speak," she says.

For other volunteers, it is the sheer joy of watching children's faces light up that makes the work rewarding.

"I feel happy when I can make others happy," says Sunny Soroosh, co-president of Kids Cheering Kids at Los Gatos High. "Some kids just have this really great attitude. They're just loving life despite their situation," she says.

"It's taught me to be appreciative of what I have," adds Anna Norman, co-president of Kids Cheering Kids.

Providing volunteers with an eye-opening experience is exactly what Baron had in mind for her own children seven years ago when she founded Sunday Friends. At the time, Baron was simply looking for volunteer opportunities for her three teenaged children.

"They were growing up in a wonderful culture, but protected from the rest of the world," she says about her children being raised in Los Gatos. That sparked her interest in taking her son, his friends and their parents to volunteer at shelters on Sundays.

"What I didn't know," she says, "was that I was the one who was going to get hooked."

For information about Sunday Friends, call 408.793.0441 or visit http://www.sundayfriends.org. Contributions are tax deductible.