Toy Drive 2022 Successfully Brightens The Lives Of 7,018 Children In The Hospital.
With the downturn in the economy and the possibility of a recession, we never anticipated we would meet our goal of brightening the lives of at least 5,000 children having to spend the holiday season in a Puget Sound area hospital.
More businesses, churches, and schools in our community participated in our toy drive than ever before, having one of our toy collection boxes in their establishment. We had 93 toy donation boxes throughout our community and spread the word online. With everyone's help, we made all of this happen...
ANNUAL CHRISTMAS TOY DRIVE
Zachary and the Kidzz Helping Kidzz Advisory of children ages 7-14 have set a goal to raise at least 5,000 toys to give to ill children at St. Michael Hospital, Seattle Children's Hospital and Mary Bridge Children's Hospital shortly before the Christmas holiday. Toys will be new and donated from the community. This is our biggest event of the year and we greatly appreciate the generous contributions from our community.
To donate toys by mail, please ship to:
Kidzz Helping Kidzz
10855 Silverdale Way NE, Unit 2224
Silverdale, WA 98383
Or send a letter (or check) to:
Kidzz Helping Kidzz
PO Box 2224
Silverdale, WA 98383
(Sorry, no packages to this PO Box)
Kidzz Helping Kidzz is a IRS tax exempt 501 (c) (3) charitable nonprofit organization. Some or all of your donation may be tax deductible. Please contact us with any questions.
Christmas Toy Drive Volunteering
Our toy drive collection boxes are not difficult to assemble, but they do take quite a bit of time. I would estimate it takes at least one hour to make one of our toy collection boxes from start to finish.
We purchase the large U-Haul boxes and then wrap the boxes, put posters on them, a sign, and then staple another poster on top of the sign.
We then staple wood on the back of the poster and sign to provide support to the box. Making 93 toy drive collection boxes that we could put into the community was quite an endeavor this year.
I think we had at least five toy drive collection box making parties with our Kidzz Helping Kidzz Advisory Board of kids and other amazing volunteers.
Immediately after distributing the toy drive boxes, volunteers throughout the county started picking up toys. The Kidzz Helping Kidzz Advisory Board of Youth began labeling each toy donation with our Kidzz Helping Kidzz logo with contact information.
We want families who receive one of our toy donations to know where that toy donation came from and to let us know how it may have helped brighten the lives of the children who receive the toys.
So, by Thanksgiving weekend we had received nearly 200 toy donations already. Our Christmas toy donation count continued to steadily climb from there, and then radically jumped by mid-December.
Each week's Christmas toy donation count was increasing by at least 2,000 toys. That means our "toy donation labeling and sorting" parties became more frequent each week, too. This allowed us to keep up with the volume of toy donations we received.
Our volunteers and Kidzz Helping Kidzz Advisory Board always showed up in full force to help us box toy donations quickly.
We received such an amazing variety of Holiday toy donations including books, candles, chromebooks, sports equipment, stuffed animals, art supplies, and more.
The Kidzz Helping Kidzz Advisory Board had such an excitement labeling, sorting and boxing the Christmas toy donations.
You could tell, they felt good inside knowing that these toy donations were going to ill children in the hospital. By December 18 we had already collected 4,913 toys. We knew that we would likely meet our goal.
Over the next several days, toys poured in bringing our final toy count to 7,018 toys.
We knew we would be brightening the lives of 7,018 ill children this holiday season.
Our next task was to load our rented 26’ Uhaul truck with all of the 7,018 boxed toys.
Our Advisory Board of Kidzz showed up in force and through the “organized chaos” and fun we loaded the truck in just under 60 minutes.
Check out this video to see a glimpse of our work. Now you know how we define “organized chaos” at Kidzz Helping Kidzz.
The following morning we met early at "Kidzz Helping Kidzz headquarters" (aka Zach’s house). We reviewed our itinerary and quickly headed off in three cars and a 26 foot U-Haul filled with toy donations.
We had delivered toys to Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital last month, so our focus today was delivering donations to St. Michael Medical Center in Silverdale and Seattle Children’s Hospital.
We arrived at St. Michael Medical Center promptly at 8:15 AM, and were greeted by Chad Melton, President and his amazing Leadership and staff.
They all helped us to offload the toys from the truck.
We brought the boxed toys to their very large Christmas tree in the lobby.
Chad Melton honored Zachary and our Kidzz Helping Kidzz Advisory Board for their civic leadership and asked if any of them wanted to come work with his leadership team.
We also recognized Paige, a longtime member of our Advisory Board who turned 14 today. We sang Happy Birthday to her.
Chad then presented Zach and the other Kidzz Helping Kidzz Advisory Board members with gifts.
The kids received beautiful blankets, Seattle Sounder soccer socks, and other fun gifts.
They also treated our entire team to Starbucks hot chocolate and cake pops.
This was the perfect breakfast for the kids who had forgotten to eat.
We then headed off to Seattle Children’s Hospital.
We arrived promptly at 11:15 am, and were greeted by friendly staff and a wonderful King 5 News Reporter named Leah Pezzetti.
We were able to offload our remaining 3,500 donated toys in just under an hour.
This is the fastest time we have ever delivered so many Holiday toy donations. All of our gift donations were in large boxes, so this helped with our efficiency.
We then drove to Taco Time to eat lunch and celebrate Paige’s birthday.
Paige was not thrilled with the prospect of us singing Happy Birthday to her again, so we just honored her quietly.
The kids talked non-stop as they reflected on their day. It was certainly memorable for us all. It is a true gift to be able to give to others in this way!
We greatly appreciate the support of our community! We simply could not have done this toy drive without our amazing sponsors who provided us with necessary funding, warehouse space, storage space, and toys!
Kidzz Helping Kidzz is run entirely by volunteers and we had amazing volunteers assist us in so many ways this year! We are so grateful to the following individuals for taking time out of their busy schedules to help us!
Volunteer Uhaul Truck and Van Drivers:
Janis & Dave Gibbard
Bob and Julie Dikeman
Wendy & Marcus Kyle
Debbie Slaton
Rhandel Darner
Volunteer Drivers for Toy delivery to the Hospitals
Stephanie Devey
Ashley Kirk
Courtney Blair
Rhandel Darner
Volunteers to pick up toys from sites & bring them to KHK Headquarters
Pam & Larry Keller
Laura Leder
Beverly Basile
Debbie Slaton
Pamela Grossman
Clint Boxman
Amazing Advisory Board of Kidzz Helping Kidzz
Zachary Darner (age 13)
Paige Devey (age 14)
Makayla Devey (age 16)
Everette Crouse (age 14)
Leighton Hill (age 13)
Logan Hill (age 11)
Maisey Blair (age 13)
Tate Blair (age 10)
Arianna Guy (age 14)
Selah Guy (age 11)
Jameson Neumann (age 14)
McKenzie Stithem (age 14)
Grace Orford (age 14)
Jane Frandsen (age 14)
Since our humble beginnings in 2016, Kidzz Helping Kidzz has distributed 30,000 toy donations to children at St. Michael Medical Center, Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital, and Seattle Children’s Hospital.
That’s 30,000 lives that we have been able to brighten!
Please consider supporting Kidzz Helping Kidzz by donating toys, time or money to our cause.
