To ensure that every family in Cochrane enjoys the giving season this Christmas, the Rocky Mountain Rotary (RMR) Club, in partnership with Cochrane Toyota and Snap Dance Studios, will be hosting their fourth annual Toys 4 Kids toy drive this holiday season.
Donations of toys, cash, gift cards, Santa sacs are currently being collected at Cochrane Toyota and Sanp Dance Studios for families in the community.
Toys 4 Kids lead and RMR member, Nicole Kimpton, explained that the donations will be dedicated to nominated families who are struggling over the holidays.
“We try to get a really detailed listing of what those families need, and then we go out and we try to get those items,” she explained. “Over the last four years we’ve helped 30 families.”
After donations have been collected, Kimpton said that the gifts will be wrapped on Dec. 21 with the help of RMR members, Snap Dance members, and local sports teams. This will be all taking place in the Cochrane Fire Services headquarters.
“Families can actually come pick up their gifts at the fire hall, so then the kids can visit the fire trucks and stuff like that,” Kimpton said.
This event serves as a way for the RMR to connect with the community, post-COVID. Kimpton said the group recognized that residents struggled over that time, and they wanted to help address the concerns in a festive way.
“People were feeling a little more isolated, and there were a lot of families that needed a little bit of extra help, so we came together and suggested the idea that we sort of do it like a Santa train, and that’s kind of how we started,” Kimpton said. “We helped seven families the first year, 12 the second year, and 14 the third year. This year, we are already at 14 families.”
Kimpton said there aren’t enough words to describe the feeling of supporting the community through this endeavour. For RMR, she said it is something magical to see how grateful the families are when they receive their gifts.
“For me, Christmas has always been about the magic, and we don’t always understand where those miracles come from,” she said. “To be able to do with sort of an anonymous group of people coming together to make other people really happy, just really shows how much Cochrane is still that ‘it takes a village’ community.”
For anyone interested in making donations or looking to get involved with the Toys 4 Kids toy drive, they can do so by visiting www.rockymountainrotary.com.
