Toys for Tots drive kicks off Oct. 1
♦ Organizers expect more families in need this year due to the pandemic.
This year’s Toys for Tots registration will be online only as the Exchange Club prepares to do the annual toy drive under COVID-19 precautions.
Organizer Linda Hatcher said they are following all guidelines given by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Families looking to register for the drive can go online to rome- ga. toysfortots.org and fill out the necessary forms, starting on Oct. 1 and ending on Nov. 30. Only families in Rome and Floyd County can participate.
On the same day registration starts, Floyd Medical Center’s EMT workers will be delivering Toys for Tots boxes to local businesses. Anyone who wants to participate can apply for a box or a donation jar on the same website as the registration forms.
Hatcher said she’s very thankful that she planned for this year’s toy drive ahead of schedule and began shopping for toys on Dec. 26, 2019. She did a few more shopping trips even after the pandemic started and said she has about the same amount of toys now than she did in 2019.
We can’t host any fundraisers this year so we need all the community support we can
get.”
organizer Linda Hatcher
However, Hatcher is expecting a lot more kids and families to be participating this year.
“We can’t host any fundraisers this year so we need all the community support we can get,” she said.
She said the collection jars will be distributed around the same time as the boxes and Floyd Medical Center EMTS will come collect the boxes on Dec. 10. After the boxes are collected, the volunteers won’t begin wrapping them for at least 48 hours, as part of the CDC guidelines.
On Dec. 19, the Exchange Club will host a drive-thru toy pick-up at Coosa Valley Fairgrounds on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The families won’t be getting out of their cars and the only exchange they’ll have with volunteers is handing them their forms. Rome High School JROTC students will be loading the trunks of the cars with bags of toys.
Hatcher said the pickup will start at 8 a.m. but she is unsure when it will be over since this is the first time they’ve done something like this before.
For any questions or if you want to donate to Toys for Tots, contact Hatcher at rometoys@gmail.com or 706-506-4635.