By Lethbridge Herald on November 28, 2024.
Alejandra Pulido-Guzman – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – apulido@lethbridgeherald.com
Staff members of Avonlea Homes spent Thursday morning shopping for toys to drop off at Lethbridge Family Services’ Angel Tree campaign with funds collected earlier this month.
Ron Tyslau, customer experience manager with Avonlea Homes, spoke to media Thursday morning during his team’s shopping spree at Toys R Us.
“Today is a followup from what we did on Nov. 15 during our kick-off. We are shopping with 15 volunteers and we’ve got about 35 carts full,” said Tyslau.
He explained that the shopping spree was possible thanks to the $30,000 they were able to raise and presented Angel Tree with during the kick-off, but since then they were able to add another $5,000 to the donation and Thursday was one of two shopping sprees to spend that money.
“We’re going to bag those and we’re going to take them to the Angel Tree this morning. It’s just fantastic. Today we’re going to be spending a minimum of $20,000,” said Tyslau.
He said they had to split the money into two shopping trips for a few different reasons, one of them being the logistics behind dealing with so many toys at once.
“Getting everything back and forth in the right timing and being Black Friday we do want to make sure that others in the community have the opportunity to take advantage of the great deals that they have,” said Tyslau.
He said that as much as they would like to take everything in the store that they can buy with the funds, they wanted to make sure they were mindful of others doing their Christmas shopping.
“Next trip is going to be within a week to 10 days. Then we’ll do our final one. We’ll recalculate their numbers and go from there and see what is left to fill,” said Tyslau.
He added that they do have a special request from Angel Tree and they will be helping out a specific family that needs extra help.
“We’re going to be helping out a mother and two boys who came into a very difficult situation, so we’ve stated that we’re going to be there for the family and we’re also going to be adding some toques, mittens and socks and just making sure everybody is nice and warm for Christmas and has a toy to open,” said Tyslau.
But how did they know what to purchase? They had help from Michelle Gallucci at Angel Tree, who told the Herald that she provided them with a list of items that were needed.
“We looked at the list and we have about 2,000 children to go, which is a lot. So, we looked at the list and figured out what the popular toys asks are, we looked at our shelves that are bare right now and we basically told them we need 50 units of Lego or 30 cars, that kind of thing,” said Gallucci.
She said some of the popular items they asked Avonlea Homes to grab from Toys R Us included stuffed animals and Bluey related toys. But even though they were receiving over 30 carts full of items, there are a few things they still need as they were unable to purchased them at that specific store and need the community’s help.
“We couldn’t get science kits from this store so we desperately need science kits. We have almost no books for any age, so it would be really nice to have books and hoodies. Kids are asking for warm clothes any size,” said Gallucci.
She added that they are also looking for socks and their teen’s room is bare, so they are looking for things to give the teens in their list.
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