Press Herald Toy Fund provides youngsters’s books to longstanding custom

For greater than seven a long time, the Press Herald Toy Fund has offered a dose of cheer to youngsters who would possibly in any other case go with out particular presents in the course of the vacation season.

This 12 months, the toy fund is continuous that custom whereas shifting its buying operation to assist the native economic system by ordering toys and different presents immediately from Maine companies. And for the primary time, the fund will present a brand new guide for each little one.

“The crew has been exhausting at work preparing for this 12 months’s toy fund effort,” mentioned Stefanie Manning, the newspaper’s group vice chairman for shopper advertising and the toy fund’s board president. “We’re particularly happy to have the ability to hold the funds we elevate in Maine by buying toys and books from native retailers and organizations.”

For a few years, the toy fund had bought toys from out-of-state wholesalers. This 12 months, the charity ordered presents by way of Reny’s, which has areas throughout the state, and handcrafted picket toys from the Maine State Jail Showroom. Presents additionally had been bought from Sherman’s Maine Coast Books, which has 5 areas in Maine, and from Catalyst for Change Put on, an area enterprise that donates a portion of proceeds from each merchandise offered to nonprofits and causes.

The books had been ordered from Scholastic by way of Stevens Brook Elementary Faculty in Bridgton. Principal Courtney Smith mentioned that association earns the college factors it could actually use to purchase books for school rooms and for college students to take house.

Final 12 months, the toy fund offered presents to about 3,200 youngsters from households in York, Cumberland, Sagadahoc, Lincoln, Knox and Androscoggin counties. The necessity is prone to be simply as nice this 12 months, if not bigger, as households attempt to sustain with growing prices for on a regular basis bills, mentioned Kathleen Meade, the toy fund’s director.

“There are such a lot of households in our service space that basically don’t have choices to pay for all the bills, plus giving their youngsters presents. In the event that they resolve to provide their youngsters presents, one thing else is lacking like meals or paying payments on time,” Meade mentioned.

The toy fund – nonetheless recognized to many because the Bruce Roberts fund – started 72 years in the past when Portland Night Categorical Editor Robert Bruce Beith, who wrote a column underneath the pen title Bruce Roberts, teamed up with Matthew Barron, Portland’s assistant welfare director, to assist native dad and mom who had been unable to purchase their youngsters Christmas presents.

Since then, the toy fund has spent hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in donations from readers to purchase toys for lots of of 1000’s of youngsters who in any other case wouldn’t obtain presents due to misplaced jobs, divorce, home violence, sickness or the demise of a member of the family. Households of all spiritual faiths and traditions obtain assist.

The charity was taken on by the Press Herald when the Night Categorical stopped publishing in 1990. The Brunswick Instances Report and Lewiston Solar Journal, each of which have readers in communities served by the toy fund, are also companions within the annual reward drive.

The work of the Toy Fund wouldn’t be attainable with out the efforts of the volunteers who join every year to assist, lots of whom are just lately retired or as soon as relied on the Toy Fund for assist offering presents to their very own youngsters.

“We’ve got such extremely devoted volunteers,” Meade mentioned. “They got here out even when many different locations had been shedding volunteers in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. They’re decided to assist these youngsters.”

Extra volunteers are at all times welcome to hitch the trouble to organize and distribute packages to folks and guardians. This 12 months, that work can be accomplished on the Press Herald headquarters on Gannett Drive in South Portland.

The toy fund is now accepting functions from households in want of help with youngsters as much as 16 years previous.

To make a donation on-line, signal as much as volunteer or apply for help, go to pressherald.com/toy-fund.

Checks made out to the Portland Press Herald Toy Fund could also be mailed to 295 Gannett Drive, South Portland ME 04106. Names of donors are printed within the Press Herald, the Solar Journal and the Instances Report until a donor needs to stay nameless.

« Previous

Next »