Continuing a tradition begun more than 20 years ago, this winter Smugglers’ Notch Resort will host two families with children sponsored by the Make A Wish Foundation, to fulfill their simple wish: to have fun in the snow. The visits are enthusiastically supported by Smugglers’ employees, who have donated holiday tree ornaments, delicious treats, cards and Vermont mementos to the families to enhance their stays. As a special gift for a family visiting last winter, a Resort employee handmade a fleece throw in the young child’s favorite color. Visiting children have built snowmen, glided on ice skates, taken rides on snowmobiles behind ski patrollers, laughed through snowboarding lessons, and grinned during sleigh rides, and all have left with fond memories of their family’s special Vermont holiday.

Smugglers’ provides support to the local community in a variety of ways, including drives to benefit the local food shelf, and donations to the local arts council. When spring flooding affected neighboring Jeffersonville and Cambridge, Smugglers’ offered housing to over 100 local residents who were forced out of their homes by the floodwaters. In the wake of tropical storm Irene this fall, which left the Smugglers’ area virtually unscathed, the entire resort community of employees, vacation homeowners and vendors came together to help those impacted by the storm. The generosity of Resort vacation homeowners combined with that of vendors led to a donation of more than $2100 to the Brattleboro Food Shelf. Many owners also volunteered to open their vacation homes to Vermonters displaced by the disaster, and Smugglers’ housed 12 displaced families in September and October. Smugglers’ staff generously contributed to a food drive that when combined with other area donations produced a truckload of food that was delivered less than a week after the storm directly to the Brattleboro Food Shelf.