This year’s Verona High School Student Council Hawkins Street School Toy Drive was a resounding success! The initial goal was to collect toys for elementary school students from pre-K to fourth grades. A total of 493 toys were needed this year to ensure that each student at Hawkins School would be able to get at least one each. The Verona community went above and beyond this year by donating well over 600 toys from November 29 to December 19.
On Tuesday December 20, eleven members of the Student Council as well as three faculty members, Linda Barone, Patrick Bresnan and Jonathan Thai, went to visit Hawkins School. Student Council President Austin Camp, had the honor of portraying Santa for the day. He and his ‘little elves’ were able to give each student at Hawkins School at least one toy. The students were elated to unwrap their gifts.
With the extra toys that were left over, another in Newark was able to benefit. The principal of North 10th Street reached out to Verona High School to help supply toys for her special needs students who have autism. In response, Verona delivered and another 55 received toys at North 10th Street as well.
But Newark wasn’t the only town to benefit from this year’s toy drive. A number of Verona families who requested assistance this holiday season will also receive toys collected from the drive. In total, nearly 600 children were able to get a toy this holiday season.
Mr. Thai would like to acknowledge the hard work of multiple parties including: the Student Council leaders at VHS, the administration at both VHS and H.B. Whitehorne, Debbie Marsano from HBW for organizing the toy collection at the middle school, the custodial staff for helping pack away and organize the toys, the faculty and staff at VHS for publicizing the event and most importantly, the generosity of the people of Verona.
