Give Chicago: Celebrating Chicagoans and charities that make a difference.

Over the course of our 70-plus-year history, our newspaper has had its fair share of taglines, including “The Bright One,” “The Picture Newspaper” and our current “The Hardest-Working Paper in America.”

This special section reminds us of another of those slogans: “Credible. Colorful. Charitable.”

For decades, our Chicago Sun-Times Charity Trust has been making holiday dreams come true for tens of thousands of Chicago Public Schools students through its “Letters to Santa” program.

This past summer, we launched a companion initiative, “Chicago Reads,” that provided free books to thousands of schoolchildren, too.

None of this would be possible without you, our readers. So today, we’re inviting you to learn more about the charitable work of some key community partners: UChicago Medicine, the Northern Illinois Food Bank, Greater Chicago Food Depository, Allstate, Merit School of Music, Alzheimer’s Association Illinois Chapter and the Chicago Fire Foundation, charitable arm of the Chicago Fire Soccer Club.

This “Give Chicago” section is the brainchild of our advertising department, which will be donating space to our aforementioned partners in the upcoming year. To learn more about that initiative, click here.

We’re supplementing this section with stories from a new feature called “Doing Well,” which frequently runs in “Well,” our weekly wellness and lifestyle section. Doing Well stories aim to highlight the work of people and not-for-profit organizations that help us lift each other up. We see them as an essential part of providing a well-rounded news report that appeals to a wide, regional audience.

Speaking of lifting each other up, it seems fitting here to highlight the work of one of Chicago’s best journalists, our very own Mark Brown. Every year, Brown kicks off our Letters to Santa program with a column. He did that last year by profiling Adrian Gonzalez, who shared a story that reminds us how one act of kindness can change a life.

As an 8-year-old at Jungman Elementary School in Pilsen, Adrian Gonzalez got a gift from the Sun-Times’ Letters to Santa program. Now, he coordinates his company’s participation in the program.

From Brown’s column:

Give Chicago

It’s been 22 years, but Adrian Gonzalez still remembers the Christmas when the Chicago Sun-Times’ Letters to Santa program left an indelible impression on his life.

Gonzalez was an 8-year-old student at Jungman Elementary School in Pilsen when he wrote a letter to Santa for a class assignment.

Gonzalez asked Santa for a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers toy. He also asked Santa to please bring something for his soon-to-be-born baby sister, who was due the following month.

On the day of his school’s big holiday party, the students gathered together and were called up one-by-one to receive their presents.

When his turn came, Gonzalez excitedly collected his gift — the blue Power Ranger, Billy, in ninja apparel, just as he’d requested.

But it’s what came next that made this a special memory.

“I got called up a second time,” said Gonzalez, recalling how it “seemed strange” to be singled out that way because nobody else received a second present.

It turned out Santa had brought a gift for his baby sister, too.

“I was so shocked,” Gonzalez recalled, his amazement only slightly tempered by the realization he’d put the request in his letter.

He obviously was too young at the time to realize that one of Santa’s helpers had gone the extra mile for him.

But he knows it now. Which is one of the reasons he is such an enthusiastic participant in the Letters to Santa program with the help of his co-workers at Jump Trading.

Gonzalez, a 2011 graduate of Xavier University, is an office administrator for Jump, one of the world’s largest proprietary trading companies.

He and his colleagues plan this holiday season to fulfill the wishes of 170 students at Catalyst Circle Rock Charter School.

Toward the end of the column, Mark includes some parting wisdom from Gonzalez: “For anybody that does this, I want to say thank you. . . . Whoever gave me a gift 22 years ago, I want to say thank you. I want them to know that I remember it, and I appreciate it. And I spend so much time giving back partly because of that.”

It’s a cycle we hope repeats itself as you peruse this section.

In the meantime, keep doing well. And thank you for readership.

Chris Fusco

Editor-in-Chief

For details about Letters to Santa, Chicago Reads and the Sun-Times Charity Trust, go to charitytrust.suntimes.com.

Click here to download today’s special Give Chicago print section.