Over 2,000 toys collected for Toys for Tots program

Over 400 children received toys last Thursday during the Lady Diann Torres’ Toys for Tots distribution ceremony at the Pedro P. Tenorio Multi-Purpose Center. (Kimberly A. Bautista)

In its first year of partnering with the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve’s Toys for Tots program, the Lady Diann Torres Foundation was able to collect over 2,000 new and used toys to donate to children across the CNMI.

The foundation held its first Toy for Tots distribution at the Pedro P. Tenorio Multi-Purpose Center last Thursday, where they gave away over 400 toys to children ages 0 to 18.

“I think it was very successful, it was a great turnout tonight; we had a lot of people. We weren’t expecting a lot of people. I think we had over 400 people registered two days in advance,” said first lady Diann Torres.

Torres explained that she reached out to various government departments. “This is all the departments getting together and getting all these gifts so we have both new and used,” she said.

Torres told reporters that compared to the Saipan Chamber of Commerce’s Saipan Young Professionals, which has been doing Toys for Tots for the last five year, the Lady Diann Torres Foundation aims to open the program to a wider range of children and not just underprivileged ones.

“With the Saipan Young Professionals, they work with the private companies and they distribute to kids that are underprivileged so we kind of got together and decided to open it to a bigger scale and we worked with the government to get the donations instead of just the private entities,” she said.

The goal was to gather 9,000 toys—the number of children enrolled in the Public School System—and although the foundation wasn’t able to reach that goal, Torres said they are still happy with the turnout and will strive to go bigger next year.

“9,000…was a big undertaking but we said let’s go for that but it’s still hard times for some people, so this was still a great turnout. We’re hoping for a bigger better turnout next year,” she said.

U.S. Marines Corps 1Lt. Brett Lazaroff, the Marines Corps’ Toys for Tots coordinator for the Marianas, said that he was happy with how big the program has gotten in the CNMI in the last five years.

“We really just want to see the program grow every year and just seeing the joy on the children’s faces when they get a toy for Christmas, it’s really what the program is about. We hope it continues to grow and we hope we can get more presents every year and that we get more donations,” he said.

Lazaroff said this year was also a record-breaker for the Marianas region as over 10,000 toys have already been collected.

“Last year we collected just over 10,000 toys between the CNMI and Guam, and we think we’re going to break that record this year. We don’t have the final numbers yet but we know that we’re already over 10,000 between Guam and the CNMI,” he said.