Take a moment to look at your screen and appreciate these joyful smiles. They are some of the 5,000 faces from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Oklahoma County, each one opening holiday gifts last year. And now the Jolly Holiday Giveaway Drive is underway to make that happen again this year. Joining us is Austin Marshall and Carly Johnson from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Oklahoma County. Welcome to you both.
5,000 kids to shop for, wow! I have two kids and that’s hard enough. So I can’t imagine. So, you know, 16 different Clubs. But before we get to the holiday drive, give us an idea of what the Clubs mean to kids year round.
“Yeah. So we have 16 Clubs across Oklahoma County and provide a safe place for over 5,000 youth to come every day after school and on school breaks. But just in addition to being a safe place, we provide so many programs to help prepare them for their future. Academic enrichment and tutoring, mental health programs, STEM, arts. We have an extensive sport league and workforce development opportunities. Really just providing, again those opportunities for them to have a great future.”
So needed for those kids that I’m sure they truly appreciate it. And they also appreciate the gifts. And now let’s talk about the holiday bash. What’s the timeline on getting the gifts?
“So we need all the guests we purchased by December 4th so that we’ve got enough time to wrap them and make sure they’re out to the Clubs so we can get into the kids before the holiday season starts.”
I didn’t even think about wrapping holy cow. who does that?
“That’ll be an all hands effort, an effort if your viewers like to help us out and there’s a lot of different ways to get involved. but we’re absolutely looking for volunteers to help us out with wrapping as well. So if you go to our website and you want to get involved and come wrap some presents with us, we would love to have you.”
That’s a great volunteer opportunity. How also can people shop from their own homes and sent a gift that way? right?
“Sure. If you go our website, we have got a curated Amazon wish list. We’ve taken all the guesswork out for your viewers. We’ve got a list of age-appropriate gifts for each of the kids in the Clubs. You can just go to our web site right on the landing page you’re going to see a link to our wish list on Amazon. We’ve taken care of all the guesswork for you.”
And if someone let’s say would love to be able to donate, but they don’t have that in their budget. there are different volunteer opportunities, including wrapping. How about year-round, what other kind of volunteer opportunities?
“So we all must have gift wrapping, which is a huge need right now during the holiday season. We’re going to be having holiday parties throughout each of our Clubs throughout Oklahoma County and then throughout the year, there are number of opportunities for folks to get involved. Whether that’s mentoring, just coming to spend some time with the kids at the Club; if you go to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Oklahoma County website and just hit our volunteer link there’s all sorts of opportunities for you to help the youth that we serve.”
And Carly, what is it like for you year round to see the appreciation, the smiles that has to be so gratifying.
“It is my favorite time of year at Boys & Girls Club. I mean, you saw from the pictures, but
this is just a fun time at Boys & Girls Club. We know that the holidays can be financially hard for some of our families. And so just to be able to help them bring some joy to our kids this holiday season, there’s nothing better.”
And those kids are so grateful their parents too, thank you both for what you’re doing. Thank you being here today.
And if you would like to help give the gift of cheer to a young student, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Oklahoma County has made it easy. You can view their holiday wish lists online like Austin was talking about or schedule a drop-of in person. We’ve set up a link for you at KFOR.com/links.
