Toy Drive Over-the-Top Successful
Thank you to our community
Last updated 1/19/2021 at 10:09am
Cars began lining up an hour before the Toy Drive was to begin. Parents who have lost jobs or whose jobs have come and gone due to the opening and closing of resorts and restaurants, really needed the gifts for their children that YOU, our community provided with your donations.
Borrego Springs Rotary has sponsored this Toy Drive every year but this year was different with hundreds of donations from local organizations, businesses, faith-based groups as well as individuals. Rotarians are still accepting and accounting for the thousands of dollars of donations that were received, both financial and actual toys.
Our estimations show that Rotary gave away a bag of toys to over 145 families for a total of 450 children. These included two-day-old newborns up to high school seniors 18 years of age.
Gifts went to our Borrego Springs Unified School District families who live not only in Borrego Springs but also in neighboring areas of Salton City, Ranchita and Shelter Valley. We also gave to a few local home-schooled children. It was a flurry of COVID-safe gift give a-ways with folks pulling up to the CRC (Community Resource Center), i.e. the former library, with masks on, noting to the waiting ladies the number of children in their families and opening their trunks to have Rotarians and Borrego Fire Fighters deposit bags of toys.
The lines of cars forming in Borrego Springs over the last few months have brought happiness whether in the form of food banks, toy give a-ways or as we saw during our Toy Drive, a man pulling up asking for a COVID-19 Test. We told him we could not accommodate his request, although we could give him a toy - he declined.
Borrego Springs continues to be like no other community we know. Your generosity and love of our children is evident in this season's kindness and philanthropy. Please know that any funds not spent on holiday gifts will be an additional post-COVID "gift" to our students in the form of field trips, school materials, sporting supplies or technology.
We thank you from the bottom of our hearts and we wish you all a WONDERFUL NEW YEAR!
Martha Deichler
Borrego Springs Rotary
School Community Liaison
Borrego Springs Unified School District
