Tables of games, train sets, Lego and more stuffed animals than the eye could see filled the East Delta Hall earlier this month.
For the 20th year, the community rallied in support of the Christmas Toy Depot, just one of the programs offered to those less fortunate in our community by Deltassist.
On the Monday morning the Optimist was on hand – just 24 hours from the Toy Depot opening its doors – it was a flurry of activity.
Volunteers from Envision Financial, CIBC, the North Delta Real Canadian Superstore, Delta firefighters and local service clubs were all on hand either dropping off toys or setting up displays in preparation for three days of giving that ensures all children have something under the tree come Christmas morning.
Lisa Schmitke from Envision said they had seven volunteers helping out.
“We add new team members every year because this is an event that warms the heart at Christmas time,” said Schmitke. “We are very community oriented so it feels really good for us to come out and be able to set up for families to come and get some of the Christmas spirit. When the team members find out what we are doing, more and more want to join every year. It just blows you away to see the amount of toys, donations and volunteers. It just seems like it gets bigger and bigger every year. We always have lots of fun.”
John Burr, president of the Delta Firefighters Charitable Society, said his organization has been involved for the past six years.
“Number one, it’s a Delta charity. Number two, it involves children and families of Delta and three, we just enjoy giving back to the community. We also have a lot of fun too. We’ve donated more $40,000 to them. We want to keep as much of what we raise right here in Delta.”
Lorraine Yates, manager of seniors and community services at Deltassist, said vehicles lined up on both sides of the road to drop off donations.
“We easily had 40 to 50 volunteers here this morning ready to go,” said Yates. “Usually we help about 700 children get toys, and that’s about 400 to 500 families, who will also get food hampers and other food hampers will also go to families without children.”
Yates said the generosity of the community and the army of volunteers makes the event work.
“And it’s just not today (the day we set up) or the three days we have the toy store. It’s also everyone who comes to our office for weeks prior to this and sorts all the toys, boxes them and labels them,” Yates said.
“We run around like crazy picking things up, visiting schools. There are two dedicated people that are staffed for this program, but over 300 volunteers. We couldn’t do this without volunteers. It’s pretty amazing.”
