Thibodaux toy drive kicks into high gear

As the Christmas season nears, churches and civic organizations in Thibodaux have started their annual toy drives to bring happiness to unfortunate children throughout the community.

This campaign is special because different people from all walks of life come together to share Christmas with the deserving children in the community, said Rosalie Shaw of St. Genevieve Church.

She said the church parishes feel successful if they can bring joy to 10 on Christmas morning. “We have set a goal to make more than 1,000 children happy this Christmas,” said Shaw.

The Thibodaux Area Christmas Toy Drive has 22 donors or districts that work with the toy drive every year. The drive caters to the cities surrounding Thibodaux as well, including St. John, the Schriever overpass and Lafourche Crossing.

In the late 1980s, St. Genevieve’s youth started gathering names for children who needed presents during Christmas. Every year another parish would join the drive, giving the group an opportunity to add more needy children to the list.

About 18 years ago, the toy drive consolidated with the City of Thibodaux to make the toy drive a citywide project. More businesses and organizations became aware of the fact that a lot of children in the community were not having a very good Christmas.

“By consolidating with the City of Thibodaux, we felt that we could reach more families. Before, some of the families were being helped twice and many were not being helped at all,” she said.

Kathleen Gros served as the campaign chairperson for the toy drive for the past 14 year. She has since retired and an eight-member committee has taken over her tasks.

Shaw, one of the eight committee members, has been participating in this campaign for more than 10 years.

In Lafourche Parish, they have collected the names of more than 650 families. After the names are gathered, the church parishes put at least 12 Christmas trees, tagged with the ages and genders of the children, in different places around the city including banks, grocery stores and daycare centers. Shaw said the age of children that receive gifts ranges from newborn to 13.

“Residents can pick as many tags off the tree as they wish. The gifts are to be brought back to the place where they got the tag. Each gift should be between $10 and $15,” she explained. “ If a tag is pulled from a church tree, then that gift is to be brought back to the church wrapped.”

There are as many as 200 tags on each tree. In some cases, all of the tags don’t get pulled, in which case different organizations will collect gifts to ensure that each child will get two gifts this Christmas.

The gifts will be available for pick-up or delivery on Dec. 16 from 10 a.m. to noon. Chairpersons from each organization will either deliver the gifts to the family’s home or have the families come to the individual churches and pick them up.

For more information on the Thibodaux Christmas Toy Drive, call (985) 446-0074.