Toys for Tots gives to Albany Advocacy Resource Center

ALBANY — Those less fortunate during the holiday season often includes those with disabilities, and here to help them in Albany is the Toys for Tots program.

The Albany Advocacy Resource Center received roughly 150 toys this season to be taken to more than 50 families in Albany impacted by disabilities. Those gifts were distributed to families on Thursday.

Lou Lee, community resource coordinator with Albany ARC, said the collection received this year at the Albany ARC office on Pointe North Boulevard was the most the agency has gotten from Toys for Tots to help children in the Albany area with disabilities, or other children whose families are impacted by disabilities in some way.

“These are children who get through the cracks that don’t have any money, and (the Toys for Tots contributions) make a real Christmas for these children,” Lee said.

The gifts, benefiting children up to age 12, range from dolls to jump rope for families who likely get no more than $700 a month in government assistance that has to go toward food and housing.

“There is no money for toys,” Lee said. “It was just a real blessing at Christmas, and people don’t realize how much (this means). Christmas is for children.”

The Toys for Tots program, coordinated by the Marine Reserve, is usually kicked off in early October. After that point, families register their children to receive toys through the Salvation Army and collection bins for new, unwrapped toys are sent out to various locations in the community before the Marine Reservists pick them up and distribute them to families in mid-December.

Toys for Tots was founded in 1947 by Maj. Bill Hendricks in Los Angeles. Upon conclusion of the 2012 campaign, the program had distributed nearly 16.8 million toys to more than 7 million children, a history on the program shows.