Toy Hub is Back for 2023

Toy Hub is back for 2023. Last year (also its first year) they provided gifts to 474 children! If you haven’t heard of them, here is a bit about what they do, why they do it and who they support. Toy Hub’s aim is to ensure that no child living within our local community goes without a gift to open on Christmas Day. They generally cover the areas of HP4, HP23 and the surrounding villages.

Christmas time, including the build-up, is a difficult time for so many families. Every grown-up wants their children to have presents to open on Christmas day and for some, just the idea of doing this is really quite tough. A sudden change of circumstances, finding things particularly tough, can’t face the idea of Christmas quickly approaching? Toy Hub is here to lighten that load. If this is you, please go to the website and apply now www.toyhub.org/apply and hopefully they will be able to offer you some support.

This is how they do it

From 3 November 2023 they begin accepting donations of new and like gifts to cover the ages of 0-18 years. With the help of wonderful volunteers, these are collected, sorted, cleaned/washed and put on shelves ready for the next stage. Toy Hub relies on donations from our local community. Donation points open on Friday 3 November, the locations will be announced on 2 November. You can volunteer here www.toyhub.org/volunteer.

Once they’ve finished ‘sorting’ they start to pack. They aim to provide 1 x brand new and 2 x like new gifts for every child. When someone applies to Toy Hub they ask for 3 x interests for each child, the idea is that they provide gifts that are specific to every child, not a random age-appropriate gift, but something they know the child will like. Depending upon donations received they aim to meet at least one of their interests, with the hope of meeting more. The bags are then packed to reflect this and delivered to the parent/carer they are supporting.

They will do all of this in the space of about six weeks, then disappear again until 2024.

Things that are important to Toy Hub:

• Support from our local community, it would literally be impossible without it. Toy Hub supports local and makes a real effort to spend any money received in local businesses.
• They deliver everything and don’t wrap any of it. Instead, they include wrapping paper and sellotape. The gifts are for the parents/carers to gift to their children.
• Providing gifts that are relevant to the recipient.
• Reusing. Toy Hub tries to reuse everything it can. The bags donations are received in are used to pack gifts into. Leftover donations are rehomed. The list goes on.