GREENSBORO, N.C. — Working from home. Remote working. Whatever you want to call it, you're not going into the office. It's empty and that could affect whether children in need get Christmas presents this year.
“Our main focus is to get the toys we need in a COVID environment where many businesses are working from home and those places where we would see drives take place for toys aren’t happening this year because they're not coming to the office,” said Major Andrew Wiley, Commander of the Salvation Army of the Greater Winston-Salem Area.
For years you've seen the Salvation Army stuff stockings, all from gifts folks in the area donated. Before COVID, thousands of families would pick up one of these stockings, fill it with toys, drop it off, volunteers would pick them up, sort them and hand them off to families. It's a lot of touching. That process can't happen this year.
The solution? A drive-thru toy drive. It begins Saturday, November 21, and goes through November 30. You can drop off an unwrapped toy at Chick-Fil-A drive-thru locations in Greensboro, High Point, Winston-Salem, and Mount Airy.
From there the Salvation Army will pick them up, and then deliver them to families.
“If someone really likes buying for two to three-year-old children then do that. If you like to buy for 10 to 11-year-olds that would be great too, that is usually the area we struggle with because, let's be honest it's more fun to buy for smaller children, but we don’t want to leave out the older ones either. So those 11 to 12-year-olds, we need gifts for them as well, “ said Wiley.