Riverside Toy Drive Gives Those With Less Much More This Holiday Season

While headlines as of late have reminded many people of the down economy, a local toy drive bucked the trend as more people than usual gave to help out those who won't have as much this holiday season. 

The Phillips Avenue Elementary School held its annual Christmas toy drive this year with help from the Flanders Riverside Northampton Community Association. It's a fifteen-year-old tradition preformed by the Giving Tree, a program at Phillips Avenue School that offers underprivileged students everything from winter clothes to school supplies and Christmas gifts. The founders, Tammi Michaelson and Donna Boscola, were particularly satisfied with this year's collection.

"The parents were incredibly grateful, they were teary eyed, just to know that they were going to have gifts under their trees this year gave them hope," Michaelson said. She also added that enough toys were donated for each child to receive two or even three, a marked increase from the amount collected last December.

She credited this year's abundance to their close coordination with the FRNCA, particularly its president, Brad Bender. After being reelected this April in the open FRNCA elections he got personally involved with this year's holiday drive and gathered more than twice as much as last year. The increased attention paid to charitable work is part of larger effort organized by Bender, the Community Cares program which aims to provide more relief to the area's struggling families.

"I wanted something that more directly impacted the people of my community. That's what its all about." said Bender, who cites surprising statistics about the region's economic demographics. Bender said that 51 percent of the general population in the area lives at or below the poverty line, while 79 percent of the students at Phillips Ave Elementary qualify for the free or reduced lunch program.

Recent data released by the American Community Survey, which is run by the Census Bureau, shows that the median household income in Riverside is $34,577, compared the county median just shy of $85,000.

The Community Cares program is a yearlong FRNCA initiative that distributes school supplies and winter coats to needy residents as well as providing meals for hungry seniors over the thanksgiving holiday. These endeavors are more frequent than earlier in the organization's history when it functioned more exclusively as a political "watchdog" and advocacy group.

Bender claims to be refocusing on more hands on charity work. "We strive to put the community back in community association," he said.

Bender also added that he will be running for Southampton town councilman in 2011 and has a strong agenda to help his constituents in need, arguing that the hardest working people are often marginalized and underrepresented due to the prosperity of neighboring towns. He remarked that the recent drive was a great reminder of the area's solidarity and posited that it was a joint effort.

"We couldn't of done it alone," Bender said. "We collected the toys, Tammy Michaelson and the Giving Tree put the toys and the kids together."