MORE than £10,000 worth of toys have been handpicked for the city’s most vulnerable children this Christmas.
A1 Toys was taken over by Glasgow Times staff yesterday morning as we took on the role of Santa’s elves, rushing to fill our sleigh, in the form of a minivan, with hundreds of gifts.
We gathered £10,000 worth of toys thanks to the kind monetary donations from people across Glasgow, as part of our Bank on Us campaign.
John McGlynn, boss at Storage Vault who is sponsoring the appeal, donated £5000 for the second year in a row.
Meanwhile, David Burns, director of award-winning A1 Toys, donated £2000 worth of stock. It’s also the second time the 52-year-old has participated in the Glasgow Times toy appeal.
Among the toys collected from the Braehead store were Barbie dolls, Toy Story figures, Lego, jigsaw puzzles, board games, soft toys, cars, colouring equipment and much more.
David, who opened his first store in Glasgow 35 years ago, said: “We do charity stuff all the time, and always at Christmas. “We won an award at the Arts and Business Scotland Awards – we won that around four years ago.
“Last year we got a lot of positive feedback following the appeal. We were shut in January, but we got lots of nice emails saying, ‘thank you for helping out’. It’s really nice to help out the community.
“A lot of children don’t get anything, so the gifts make a huge difference to them, an absolutely massive difference to them.
“Lots of people are struggling, particularly now. There are lots of people out of work. It will make a huge difference to a lot of families, which is what we wanted to do.”
All of the toys are in the process of being delivered to toy banks, schools and charities across Glasgow who will then distribute the gifts to families in need.
They will be slipped under the tree for kids to wake up to on Christmas morning.
Our campaign last year raised £15,000 and delivered around 100,000 gifts to children across the city - who may have woke up to nothing.
The Glasgow Times Bank on Us campaign has been sponsored by Storage Vault, the Emmie Smillie Charity Foundation and the Pandamonium Play Centre.
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