By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The Salvation Army in St. Joseph believes everyone should have a happy holiday, and are giving away toys and clothes as part of an annual tradition.
The Salvation Army Toy Shoppe will run today [Wed.] and tomorrow [Thu.] out of the Salvation Army gym, providing applicants in need with toys and clothes for their children.
Major Ronald Key says toys were gathered from donors thanks to the angel tree tags that were around St. Joseph. And now everything is set up and ready to be given away
"Hopefully everybody's applied who needs to apply and those kinds of things, but we'll probably help we're talking 150 kids this year probably," Key tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "They'll pretty much, the last two years because of COVID we had to bag it off ahead of time, this year the parents can actually go around the Toy Shoppe and pick what their children want, so it's a little more personable that way."
Key says people that applied to come to the Toy Shoppe are all in need for one reason or another.
"Maybe they don't have, because of the economy, still maybe affected with COVID, a lot of different things, so it helps us to supply what their children need for Christmas or what they've asked for," Key says. "So, we do the best we can with filling that need and most of our children go home with eight to ten toys and that also includes clothing and stuff like that."
Volunteers are still needed to help at the Toy Shoppe escorting shoppers through all the toys that were donated. Interested people should call the Salvation Army offices to volunteer.
Key says the number of donations this year has been outstanding, and the Salvation Army gym is full and ready to give toys away this year.
"The generosity of the people in St. Joseph who have purchased things for kids they don't know is just wonderful, so we've had organizations that have adopted and provided stuff, local Walmart stores and Sam's Club who have put up angel trees for us, Menards who does an angel tree for us, all of those things have been wonderful," Key proudly says. "So, as far as donations we're doing really well on those."