The little brown sliver to the top and far left of the photo is the door to my office suite. The food extends on the other side of that door and down the hall in the other direction. Every fall, students in MGMT 209, 211, and increasingly other courses collect food for our local food bank and its hungriest citizens.
I don't mind walking around canned corn to get into my office!
The other fall project that Keith Swim (the mastermind behind the food drive) sponsors is a toy drive for kids in Child Protective Services in Brazos County. His project actually provides gifts to more than 20% of the 500+ CPS children in the area. He tries to make sure that each child receives three gifts. You do the math.
Because I think Keith is such a fantastic guy and this is such a worthwhile project, I wanted to share his appeal with you:
It is that time of the year again for our annual toy drive for children at Child Protective Services. For those of you who do not know what I am talking about, my students (MGMT 211 and MGMT 209) have for several years agreed to sign up to purchase toys and clothes for the children under the care of Child Protective Services. These are children in the Brazos Valley who have been taken away from their parents due to physical, sexual or emotion abuse and placed into foster care. The children are allowed to pick three (3) toys/gifts that they would like to have for Christmas and also provide their clothes and shoes sizes. My students then sign up for a toy/gift or clothes to purchase for the child. They also solicit help from their Student Organization, the Corps, Fraternities, Sororities, churches, etc. Several students’ families will take an entire child to adopt.
We have committed to purchase Toys/Clothes for 110 children this year and would like to do even more. (CPSC has about 500 children that they need people to “adopt” during the holiday season.
So where do you come in?
Some of you have supported this Holiday Toy Drive for several years and we need your support again. So, if you are interested, here is how you can help:
1. You can contact me and pick up the list for an entire child, purchase the items selected by the child, wrap them and bring them back to me with the child’s name on the packages.
2. You can sign up for one present or clothing item, wrap the gift and return it to me with the item and child’s name on the package. (I will take the item information off, that is just so that I know if the child has received the things on his/her list.
3. You can purchase a gift card at Wal-Mart, Target, Toys R Us or Best Buy.
4. You can donate money. I don’t take money from my students but there are always items that they cannot afford to purchase so I send students out with donations and gift cards to buy items for children that didn’t get the items they had asked to receive. I am very careful which students I send to shop and I always make them bring receipts that we both go over to be sure that all of the money is spent on the children. Any amount would help.
You can drop the money or gift cards off at my office in Wehner 410 or to Phyllis in the Management Department main office Wehner 420.
If you want to see the list come by my office during my office hours:
MW 3:45 to 6 pm
TR 8-9:15 and 12:45 to 2
You can always call me at 845-3905 and I will come pick up any donations or bring the list for you to see.
Anything that you can do to help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Keith's email is: kswim@mays.tamu.edu
If you want to support this project you can send a check to
Keith Swim
MS 4221
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843
or to me
4138 Cypress Road
Bryan, TX 77807]
And you can click here to join the facebook group for this project.
You may remember that Erin was an ancillary beneficiary of Keith's generosity during her first stem cell transplant. The students did an add-on to their collection and brought stuffed animals to the hospital to cheer her up (notice Rosie dressed in her Christmas outfit on the lower left of the animal pyramid, welcoming the newcomers to the hospital):
You can read the retrospective here. Thank you!
That's awesome! The Christian club I'm in at the high school does things called Blessing Boxes every year. We collect presents from all the classrooms and we also use a good deal of our club funds to go shopping for gifts. (This weekend! I can't wait!) Then we get to spend a whole day wrapping and packaging them and sending them off to schools to be distributed to underprivileged kids. :) :)
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