More than 600 items have been donated for this year’s Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser toy appeal – helping to ensure a happy Christmas for youngsters across Monklands.
Big-hearted local residents piled toys, games, books and gifts into the collection trollies at Morrisons and Tesco in Airdrie and at Asda in Coatbridge.
And their generous gifts have now been distributed to a host of community groups.
Volunteers from the Rotary Club of Coatbridge, Airdrie and Monklands sorted the items by age group at their weekly meetings, and have now handed them over to local organisations to ensure they will appear under the tree for deserving youngsters to open on Christmas morning.
The gifts have been distributed via Coatbridge community nurses and health workers, the @home centre in Airdrie, Bare Necessities, St Vincent de Paul and local primary schools and nurseries.
Donations flooded in at pace during the final two weeks of this year’s appeal; and any last-minute donations will still be collected by Rotary members and passed on to the local good causes.
Rotary toy appeal co-ordinator Norbert Grant told us: “People have been very generous and there’s been a great range of gifts handed in.
“We’ve had things like curling tongs, aftershave gift sets, slippers and pyjamas for older teenagers; and for toddlers books and jigsaws have been quite popular this year – their popularity during lockdown has maybe played a part in that.
“The supermarket staff have been brilliant as always in collecting the donations and storing them for us to collect, and the Rotary members sorted through them all at our weekly meetings.
“We’ve sifted through them to sort them into age groups to make sure we get them to the right places, and thoroughly enjoyed the project and loved getting involved.”
This year is the ninth in which the Advertiser has run the toy appeal, with the help of the area’s supermarkets and community groups; and this year’s generous donations take the grand total in that time to 12,500 items handed over to make it a merry Christmas for Monklands youngsters in that time.
A further donation of around 200 items from Glasgow charity Kids Out is also being distributed by the Rotary members through its toy appeal network of good causes.
Norbert added: “We’re pleased that we’ve still been able to expand coverage this year – it’s been a good year and the club members have loved being involved.
“We want to thank everyone who’s donated or supported the appeal and we’re already looking forward to next year.”
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