It turned out to be a very Merry Christmas indeed for more than 5,000 underprivileged children in Fayette and Coweta counties.
Despite meager donations early on, the annual Toys for Tots drive finished strong in the closing two weeks.
The outpouring of support enabled the program to help not just the initial 5,000 children who had been signed up, but also all those kids on the campaign’s “waiting list,” said organizer Jeff White.
“We actually found some people who weren’t even on any list that we were able to get toys out to,” White said.
The support from the community was just “utterly amazing,” White said.
The 5,000 children initially signed-up for this year was up from 4,000 last year, organizers said. That 25 percent increase led to some nervous moments for the campaign, which established the waiting list a bit sooner than it had planned … just to make sure it could meet the needs of the first round of children.
Toys for Tots is an annual nationwide campaign undertaken by the Marine Corps. But the local effort, spearheaded by the local detachment of the Marine Corps League, was designed to make sure that all toys collected would be earmarked for children in Fayette and Coweta counties, organizers said. In the past, toys collected here had been distributed through a metro Atlanta Toys for Tots network.
Volunteers organized the toys in a local warehouse so they could be picked up by local agencies such as Head Start to distribute to their clients. In some cases, Toys for Tots got thank-you emails from those agencies complete with photos of smiling gift recipients.
And that was the best part of the whole effort, White has said: knowing that it’s making a difference in the community.
