CONVOY FOR TOTS
Seventh annual charity drive benefits children across Capital Region
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » The seventh annual Convoy for Tots transported thousands of toys on Sunday morning with a mission to bring holiday cheer to children across the Capital Region.
More than 100 vehicles from many area businesses, civic organizations and emergency service agencies participated in the charity drive to benefit the 2020 Capital Region Toys for Tots campaign.
Over the past six years, the Convoy for Tots - coordinated by the Saratoga County Sheriff’sOffice and iHeartMedia Albany - has become the single largest donation event for Capital Region Toys for Tots, and has resulted in the donation of more than 90,000 toys valued at approximately $1.2 million.
Though collection procedures were slightly different his year, the sheriff’s office believes the convoy’s donations will be among some of its record numbers from past events.
“Because of everything COVID has done, there’s just so much need this year,” Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office director of emergency communications Steven Gordon said on Sunday as the donationswere gathered for delivery. “We’re fortunate that we’re able to leverage our partnerships and set up an event like this, and that an event like this could continue in light of COVID procedures.”
The convoy began at the Ballston Spa Middle School/High School campus, wheremembers of the public were
invited to make donations, to its destination of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center parking lot.
Here, the toys collected were combined into one large donation for Capital Region Toys for Tots, an initiative of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, for immediate distribution this holiday season.
The primary goal of Toys for Tots is to deliver, through a new toy at Christmas, a message of hope to less fortunate youngsters that will assist them in becoming responsible, productive, patriotic citizens.
Out of all 963 Toys For To ts campaigns, “We’re the number one campaign in the nation,” U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Patrick Lurenz, Capital Region Toys for Tots assistant coordinator, shared during Sunday’s event.
In 2019 the local Toys for Tots campaign distributed a total of 224,624 toys to 195,999 children throughout the 14-county Capital Region.
For 2020, organizers are anticipating an increase in requests for toys. “Obviously we have some challenges this year in the communities. There are people that are working less, that are not working at all-so we have anticipated an increase in need for support to the community, because families might be in a different spot with where they’re at financially,” Lurenz said. “We are directly seeing that in the requests that we’re getting from the not-for-profit agencies that we serve.”
He continued, “We’re trying tomake some changes to accommodate what we know is going to be an increased need this year.”
The Capital Region Toys for Tots campaign will continue accepting donations of new, unwrapped toys, as well as monetary donations, through Dec. 22. The campaign is also seeking groups of volunteers to help process toys at the Toys for Tots warehouse in Clifton Park.