2009 Toy Give-a-Away

What a long last work week of 2009. I typically only work Monday through Thursday, which leaves Friday as a community day. This past week DICP held its annual Toy Give-a-Away on Friday December 18th. Since it is our big Christmas event it meant that we would need quite a few volunteers and to top off all of that the guy who usually runs it broke his leg about three week ago. Needless to says this means I worked Friday, as planned but was trying to figure things out on the fly. Now don't get me wrong all of our staff was around doing what they usually do for the event but it was very crazy for me with it being my first time at the event. Here’s a recap of the day:

Once Friday rolled around I woke up bright and early (6am) and headed down to the parish to make sure everything was in order. Upon my arrival I looked around the corner to find over 100 people waiting in line for their tickets. The first person in line had arrived at 6pm the night before making sure to get the best spot. So the way the day works, people line up and beginning at 7am one of our staff begin to hand out tickets to those in line. The calling of the tickets started at 9am starting with the first ticket and person and ending with the last, whose ticket number was in the 400’s. (Very clever I know.) In order for the families to get tickets they have to have legal documentation for each child and each child only gets one gift each. So the grandma and the parent can't come and get gifts for the same children. The day began very smoothly, all of our volunteer elves showed up and the seniors program had the coffee and food ready to go. Now our volunteers elves help our ticket holders find gifts for their children. Before they can come back to pick gifts, two of our staff members call out ticket numbers and fill out a slip for the guardian/ parent that shows how many kids, which gender and age of each child that the guardian will “shop” for. Once that is filled out an elf brings the guardian back and helps them find gifts for each child on their slip.

On Friday December 18th the Denver Inner City Parish served over 400 families and had collected 3,700 toys. In a year when even Toys for Tots is down in total toys collected, it is truly amazing to say that I was part of an agency that was able to make a difference for so many children and families at one of my favorite times of year.