This is the first year I will not be organizing a toy collection.
For many years I have organized toy collections for what one might call under serviced charities. It has either been for kids in the county hospital (for those of you in civilized countries with national health plans, county hospitals are typically where people who can't afford anything and are desperate go). Or, I have collected toys for women's safe houses, where women who are fleeing domestic abuse go with their kids.
For the first time I have just not had myself organized.
The management of the office building I work in arranged with the Salvation Army to have an angel tree. You know, there are gift tags on the tree with the gender of a child in need, their age and two presents they would like.
So I went to the tree to get a tag. Mind you, I have left it a bit late. I take one tag, go to my desk to go onto
Amazon, figuring I'll order online and have it delivered to my office, and then I nearly fell over. The two things the kid wanted added up to about $125! I went back, got another tag, this time it was about $130!
I finally took my iPhone down to the lobby and used my Amazon app. I took a tag for a little boy who seems to have had much more reasonable expectations, and now his toys have been ordered.
Frankly I blame the adults. The tags were all completed by an adult. Why don't they guide the kids to ask for something a bit more reasonable rather than two toys one costing $70 and the second costing $50. If the requests were more reasonable, there's a greater likelihood that they'd have their wish fulfilled.