KGW Toy Drive needs donations
KGW Kicked off its 25th annual toy drive on the day after Thanksgiving following the tree lighting to collect new toys to give to the less fortunate children in our community. Anyone can donate new unwrapped toys by bringing them to participating Les Schwab Tires until Dec. 18 and to the KGW studio now until Dec. 19. “Our goal for this toy drive is to beat our previous record. Last year we reached just over 60,000 toys,” said Susan Nguyen of KGW. Toys for all ages are greatly appreciated but Nguyen mentions that they especially need things for kids older than 15, such as CDs and gift cards. The KGW toy drive is a place where all of the smaller groups and individuals can bring their toys to distribute. KGW has about 60 different organizations that help collect toys to donate including countless amounts of church groups, Head Start, Boys and Girls Club, Toy and Joy, The Salvation Army, Elks Club, Tualatin Fire and Rescue as well as various food banks. When asked if she had any stories from past toy drives Nguyen shared a few. Hundreds of schools bring large donations of toys that they’ve collected from students. There have been a couple of kids with birthdays in December that bagged up all of the presents that they got for their birthday and brought them in to donate them, which was cool because the kids where doing it on their own. There is also an 80-year-old cabinet maker/woodworker who donates homemade wooden toys, such as old fashioned trains that he has spent all year long building just like a real life Santa. Nguyen also mentioned a KGW viewer that died and left his Hot Wheel collection of about 10,000 cars to the KGW toy drive in his will. “No matter how many toys we collect children are always in need. This is a perfect time for you to reach out to people in your community,” says Nguyen.
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