Well, folks, as you know, it is the holiday season and the need around our community is great. I was given the name of Marcus Kennedy with Toys for Tots Foundation in Mason County by, uh, our great friend, uh, Amber trail at our community credit union. She said, Jeff, you got to get in touch with Marcus because the need is great for the kids in our community.
And then, uh, so we were able to connect and I got Marcus on the line. How you doing? Good. How are you Jeff? I'm great.
I'm great. Happy holidays to you. Merry Christmas.
And Toys for Tots is such a worthwhile organization. And, uh, from what Amber was telling me, the need is great. We have between six and 9,000 kids a year in the Mason County area that we get toys out to.
All of our toys are donated a hundred percent. All the money that goes to our program stays in our County. We're looking for help.
We've got lots of kids to supply toys with, and Santa's got a lot to do. You are going to be collecting donations on Saturday, which is a huge day in Shelton for Christmastown and everything. So folks are hopefully going to be around anyways, and then they'll get a chance to maybe pick up a certain toy or how is this going to work? So we're hoping people can either bring in toys or cash donations.
We're going to be on the streets, downtown on first and railroad between the hours of 10 and two on Saturday. We'll also be in the parade as well, but you can bring your donations down to us or you can drop them off at any of our locations in town. We've got them in just about all the major businesses.
Is there, is there any sort of specific toy boy, girl, age group that folks should be keying in on or is it whatever? Every year we, we have a lack of donations in the teenage area. Um, when people think of toys for tots, they think that everybody, most of the kids are little kids and we have kids all the way up to the age of 18. Okay.
That age group typically is what we have the least amount of donations for, and we could use any donation, but those in that area would be extremely helpful. There's a website for toys for tots of Mason County Shelton dash waa.toysfortots.org. I'll put the link in this conversation so people can jump right to it, but there is more information there on how folks can not only donate, but also request and get involved more. Tell me a little bit about your involvement in this.
What, what brought you to toys for tots? So me and my wife started dealing with them in 2018, 17, 18. Um, we started working with the program yearly. Uh, we come from a cheerleading background where my wife ran multiple cheer teams and our kids got older and we wanted to keep them community involved.
And so we started working with toys for tots shortly thereafter, they were looking for someone to run the program. And my wife's now the head of the Mason County division. Oh, right.
That's a great story. And a great organization that does every year help out so many folks, not only in our community, uh, but there are going to be, uh, you know, organizations and toys for tots chapters all across the state and the country at this time of the year, especially that are looking for support. So again, the key time is Saturday from 10 till two.
Uh, where again will you be so people can be standing on the corners, but on first and railroad will be surrounding right there in that area. You won't be able to miss it. That's right, right.
Downtown as people are driving through, that's a perfect location for that. You'll see them in the parade as well. And then you mentioned drop-off locations and those are those boxes, the cardboard boxes that you see when you go into businesses, that's right.
We've got them in OCCU, Walmart, multiple small businesses here in town. Wherever you seen the sign, they typically have a box. Well, folks are out shopping now and getting their lists all checked off.
If you've got the ability to add one more or two more toys, especially in a teenage age group, uh, to help out this organization, uh, make sure you get that done and donate it. Is there a deadline that we need, uh, to, to try to get up to break? We start to break out the toys into piles in, in our gym here, locally up at mountain view is where our distribution point is and we hand out the toys around the 20th of December. So we have to get them up there so that they can be broke down into age groups and so on and so forth, then it's everybody that's part of the program.
Their bag gets loaded as to what age group they are. And so forth. Okay.
So there's a little bit of time, but it's no time like the present to get these presents for these kids. Marcus Kennedy on the phone with me from toys for tots in Mason County. You'll see him and a bunch of volunteers right at first and railroad on Saturday from 10 to two also in the parade.
So you could learn more about that. I'll put the links to your website as well in the, uh, show notes. Um, Marcus, I'm glad that we got connected here before, before Saturday.
You and me both, Jeff, we really appreciate all your help. We need all the support we can get. For sure.
For sure.