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USMC Wants You

To drop off a toy. Marines face a dire toy shortage. Boston Herald: 

More than a quarter million toys are needed to avert a blue Christmas for needy children this year, as the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots program in Boston tries to stave off a crisis of soaring requests for help amid plummeting donations.

“We still have about 300,000 (toy requests for) children to help and we probably only helped about 5,000,” said Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Michael Kwiecinski, whose South Boston warehouse is nearly empty just two months into the toy drive.

“Because of the economy, more families are in need, but unfortunately that’s influencing what people donate.”

The Boston area is not alone. Art Enos, Toys for Tots coordinator for Essex and Middlesex counties, said need across the state is up between 20 percent and 25 percent, while the donation events the program has held so far have failed to attract the number of toys they did in the past.

To help, state police spokesman David Procopio said all of its barracks will double as drop-off centers between now and Christmas. He said folks can stop by day or night to donate state-wide.

The economic realities are forcing organizers to make tough decisions about how thin to spread the holiday cheer.

“We’re going to minimize the number of toys we give out. When the economy was good, we might have been able to give three to four toys per child,” Procopio said. “This year we’ll probably be down to one to two per child. We’ll just have to allocate differently.”

But that’s assuming the toys come in. Kwiecinski said a Toys for Tots drive at the Quincy Christmas parade yesterday that routinely nets a large moving truck chock-full of goods only brought in half as much.

“It’s less than half of what we got last year,” he said.

Marines are also running against the clock. In order to fill all the requests by Dec. 23, Toys for Tots needs the unwrapped toys to hit the warehouse no later than Dec. 19, leaving the Boston branch a little over two weeks to help area aid organizations give thousands of kids a happy holiday.

To make matters worse, Kwiecinski said the Marine Corps is staring down the area’s massive want with an empty South Boston warehouse. The program tries to keep the warehouse full by building the supply of donations a year ahead. But last year also saw a downturn in drop-offs, but disaster was averted by a Samaritan at the last minute.

Topics: kids

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:32 am on Monday, December 1, 2008

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