Christmas Toy Store

On Friday, Little-Miss-Whats-For-Lunch and I took part in a volunteer opportunity as part of work. We picked Anglicare Victoria and our task involved working in the Christmas Toy Store. It was kind of a day off work, but for a good cause. Back in June, I took part in tree planting for the areas affected by the bush fires. But this time round, I wanted to try something slightly different, and anything Christmas sounded fun!

We arrived at Fitzroy by 9am and were immediately greeted by two Aboriginal women, looking a bit drunk at the tram stop. We noticed how the area was surrounded with many government housing blocks. Little-Miss-Whats-For-Lunch, already a bit nervous, looks around and says to me "Jules, I'm so glad you are doing this with me, and I'm not here alone" hehe

Finally, we walked to the Anglicare office, and a nice man, who manages the site, gives us a tour around the building, and explained to us what they do, how they do it, and why. He was very grateful that we have offered our help for the day, and soon enough, we headed upstairs to the Toy Store to start work.

There are four rooms at the Toy Store. We started off at the boys section:

Hehe as you can see, the room was a bit of a mess.

And this is what it looked like after we tidied things up.

We were shown an itinerary, and starting from 10am, there were social workers from different places, foster homes etc dropping by at the Toy Store to collect the toys. Our job was to sort the toys, stack them up neatly on shelves and help these people pick out toys. They had a list of the different age groups, boys/girls and unique requirements.

The second group that came in, I had a strong feeling... were picking up toys for children from war-torn countries like Afghanistan, or even countries from Africa. As I was helping them pick toys, the lady says to me, "strictly no guns or war toys for the children".

As each group dropped by, collected toys and left, the shelves were empty again and needed to be re-stocked before the next group arrived. In between all that, we had random people stopping by, dropping off boxes of donations - toys, basic amenities, food and coffee. 90% of the donated items are all brand new. Little-Miss-Whats-For-Lunch and I would have to quickly unpack the boxes, sort them around the different places and tidy up the Toy Store.

The last group that came by, around 2pm, was a foster home for Aboriginal children. So they wanted more 'Australian' toys, sporting goods like cricket bats, boomerangs, books about Australia, etc.

Here are some photos of the various rooms in the Toy Store:

Little-Miss-Whats-For-Lunch at the book room. There were plenty of books for different age groups, craft packs and jigsaw puzzles.

This is the nursery room. Lots of stuffed toys for babies.

The girls room. We started off with plenty of Barbie dolls, but by the end of the day, they were all gone. The boys room had a much bigger supply of toys than the girls room.

Finally, before heading home, I could not resist taking a picture with a Teletubby! haha I used to like Teletubbies back in high school (weird, I know) 

Overall, it was a very fulfilling day, and definitely an eye-opening experience. We get so caught up with Christmas festivities, buying expensive presents for our loved ones, that we forget how the less fortunate, or the homeless are coping. I will be supporting Anglicare Victoria from now, and doing my part to give back to the community.