Bob and Wendy Giusti live with their two kids in a two-story house in Willow Glen. Bob is an international tax consultant, and, up until last year, Wendy was a third-grade teacher's aide at their children's private school.

These two families, coming from seemingly opposite walks of life, were united eight years ago when Wendy adopted Barbara and her family through the Box Project, a nonprofit organization that couples volunteers with families who live in rural poverty.

"The thing I liked about the Box Project was that once they match you up with a family, they back out of it," says Wendy, who first read about the project in an issue of Better Homes and Gardens. "So then it's just between you and the family."

The project began in 1962 when New Hampshire resident Virginia Naeve sent out boxes of supplies to a needy family in Mississippi. Naeve's neighbors heard about her correspondence and began packaging boxes for her to send, until she started matching volunteers directly with a mailing list of needy families.

Seven years later, the Box Project was incorporated as a nonprofit organization and expanded its reach to five target areas, including Appalachia and American Indian reservations in South Dakota. The project now serves 2,800 families through a volunteer base of more than 2,500 sponsor families.

A large influx of volunteers emerged after information about the project appeared in national magazines, and the organization soon came up short of recipients. Consequently, Wendy wasn't matched with a family until 1995.

Now, sitting next to her unusually large monthly box to Mississippi, she reminisces about her first impression of Barbara's family.

"When I got assigned to this family with three older boys, I was kind of disappointed because I wasn't really sure what fifth-grade boys liked to do," Wendy says, noting that the Box Project now accepts family preferences from volunteers. "But now I wouldn't trade because of the friendship Barbara and I have developed."

This friendship is also the reason Wendy has recently agreed to adopt Barbara's five grandchildren into her recipient family. So far the only trouble that Wendy has come across with the grandkids are their birthday presents.

"They all have birthdays in December and January, and they're already getting things from me for Christmas, so I couldn't go out and do all the shopping," she says. Desperate for time and money, Wendy told Barbara that she would send the children's birthday gifts in the middle of summer, which explains the heavy box now lying on Wendy's dining table.

"I send them lots of books; the younger ones get stuffed animals, and the older ones get outdoor games," Wendy says, spouting off a list of what she's enclosed. She also packs household equipment for Barbara and large shipments of clothes.

"Now that there are so many kids, I hit the thrift stores and yard sales for clothes," Wendy says. "I know those kids are growing—they're like weeds!"

The Box Project requires sponsors to send a monthly box with contents worth $50 and to establish a friendship with the receiving family through letters and phone calls.

Though Wendy is not sure the family even owns a telephone, she says Barbara has never failed to write a letter each month, despite her ongoing health problems.

"She has terrible arthritis in her hands and has had several surgeries, but she never misses writing," Wendy says. "Sometimes she'll write more than other months, but I've always heard from her."

And in each package, Wendy encloses a letter to Barbara updating her on the Guisti family's whereabouts, which she says has become a pretty accurate, eight-year chronicle of their lives.

"I think they really enjoy hearing about what we're up to and how my kids are growing, and I really enjoy hearing about her kids' proms and birthdays, or their most recent fish fry," Wendy says.

But Wendy says she has gotten even more out of the Box Project.

"It has really opened my eyes to how other parts of our country live," Wendy says. "I think it has shown my family what people can do with what little they have."