Toy Hub’s mission is to ensure every local child has a gift to open at Christmas, by providing parents and caregivers with unwrapped, age appropriate gifts.
https://www.toyhub.org/copy-of-home
It works a bit like a pop-up shop to be honest! We appear for approximately six weeks of the year, and with the support of our local community, we mange to sort, pack and deliver new and like-new, un-wrapped gifts for hundreds of children in the lead up to Christmas. Why so early we hear you ask? Quite simply, to avoid any un-due worry for the grown-ups that we are supporting.
This is what it looks like:
- We open donations point for new and like new toys and gifts for 0-18 year olds.
- We start collecting these donations and taking them back to Toy Hub HQ (otherwise known as a warehouse space that we are kindly gifted for eight(ish) weeks).
- The donations are sorted/checked/cleaned/repaired/washed/spruced up to ensure they look ‘like new’.
- We finish taking donations after a couple of weeks and continue ‘sorting & putting away’ until everything has found its place on a shelf.
- The warehouse now looks like an albeit (less organised) version of a shop.
- We start packing* everything into bags ready for delivering.
- Packing and delivering on repeat until the end.
*How do we know what to pack? We have a system which involves lots of individually labelled tags and separate packing lists to make sure we don’t miss anything.
We deliver everything un-wrapped. Why? We don’t provide support to children, we provide support to the grown-ups so that they can gift to their children.
What do we rely on?
The obvious one, money. We are so immensely grateful for the financial support we’ve received so far. We are always happy to have conversations about how you can support us with this.
The support of our local community! Whether that be a physical donation or a financial one, letting us put up a big banner, being a donation point, lending us a huge warehouse space. The list is endless to be honest.
Donations. We depend on physical donations from our local community of new and like new gifts for children aged 0-18. Without these, we wouldn’t be able to provide any support.
The super heroes aka our volunteers. All this would be impossible without the support of our wonderful volunteers! Collecting, sorting and packing thousands of donations in the space of a few weeks is no mean feat. We are truly grateful for the support we receive each year. Our volunteers are precious individuals and key to Toy Hub succeeding each year.
St Mary’s Church in Ivinghoe is a Toy Hub donation point.
To find out more information about what you can donate, to make a financial donation, to buy an item from their Amazon wish list, or to refer someone (or self refer) for support at Christmas, or to join the team of volunteers making the Christmas magic happen, please click the link to the Toy Hub website: https://www.toyhub.org/copy-of-home
Phone: 01442 827913