By Mary O’KEEFE

The pandemic increases need within the community but also increases the chance for generous donors to lend a needed hand.

Students in Glendale Unified School District have already been challenged by dealing with virtual classes and isolation and one of the activities they miss the most is performing community service. Throughout the pandemic student organizations and clubs have been finding creative, socially distanced and masked ways of helping others with events like drive-through food collections.
In that spirit, the Crescenta Valley High School Instrumental Music [CVIM] department has reached out to help others by co-hosting a toy drive for families in need.

“Earlier we did a food drive for the Bailey Center,” said Tracy Brown, CVIM parent. “We wanted to do something [during the holidays] as community service.”

CVIM students decided a toy drive would be a perfect holiday event.
There are many organizations that traditionally collect toys during the holidays; however, some of them are not seeing the number of donations they have in the past due to the pandemic and social distancing guidelines.
The Glendale Police Dept. (GPD) and Glendale Police Officers Association (GPOA) are two of those organizations collecting toys and food for families in need.

“We are still adopting families,” said Amy Tate, GPD organizer for the donation program.

Each year, GPD and GPOA collect and distribute toys, food and Christmas trees. GPD cadets, officers and staff typically deliver the trees. They take the tree into the home and help set it up – in some cases even bringing decorations if the family needs them. A week or so later the group, which this year includes community members from organizations like the Glendale Kiwanis, join in and deliver the gifts.

This year will be different, Tate said, due to the guidelines in place by Los Angeles County, which are changing often.
“We are still going to deliver,” she said. “We might have to leave [items] at the front door, though.”

This is an option that she hopes will not have to be utilized but she acknowledges that all mandates set forth by the County of Los Angeles and City of Glendale will be followed.

The need for support over the holidays is growing. CVIM members are reaching out to their members and the community to donate toys for the GPD toy drive.

“I think [CVIM members] are making the best of this difficult situation,” Brown said of the students who are working at home via virtual learning. She added that students engage in daily music practice through Zoom and also virtually meet with coaches. Due to the pandemic, CVIM does not have to pay for buses to travel to games so those funds can be used to benefit outreach efforts.

Prom Plus Club and Prom Plus have joined these efforts and added a food collection component to the toy drive event. PPC members voted to help with the GPD toy drive and wanted to add food collection after learning that the Bailey Center, in the last few weeks, has seen the number of families in need triple in numbers.

“I think the toy drive is poignant especially during these times,” said David Green, president of Prom Plus Club and a student at Crescenta Valley High School. “We [students] haven’t had a lot of opportunity to help people and now that we have this opportunity we should take it.”

Regarding the food drive, he added, “It’s important to have a food drive. There are people, including some in our own community, who are struggling.”

CVIM and Prom Plus have also joined forces with the Fire House youth center to help with the collection. The toys and food will be collected on Dec. 11 from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at St. Luke’s of the Mountains Episcopal Church and Fire House, 2563 Foothill Blvd. at the northeast corner of Rosemont Avenue. The donations will be collected in the church’s parking lot, which can be accessed on Cross Street east of Rosemont Avenue.

The Glendale Moose Lodge 641 has also teamed up with American Legion Post 288 and VFW Post 1614 in organizing a holiday toy drive. Collection of unwrapped new toys will be on Saturday, Dec. 5 at Verdugo Hills Memorial Hall at 4011 La Crescenta Ave. (across the street from the La Crescenta Woman’s Club) between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. and will support CVIM and Prom Plus drives.