The Team Up For 1 Foundation (TU41) holds an annual toy drive called, "Team Up For Toys". The gifts we purchase with financial donations support 500 challenged children who attend five Baltimore inner-city schools. For many of these children, the toys we donate may be the only gift they receive during the holiday season, making this program crucial to maintain and grow. Our goal is to deliver at least 500 toys each year, with the hopes of expanding our reach year after year.
There are hundreds of challenged children attending inner-city Baltimore schools who receive little or no gifts for the Holidays. An alarming 23 out of the 35 lowest-performing schools in the state are located in low-income Baltimore City neighborhoods. The families in these communities do not have the resources to celebrate and provide gifts to their challenged children the way they want to. Without the support from our program, many of these children would receive nothing during the Holidays.
Year-round fundraising for our annual toy drive will help ensure that we can support the 500 challenged children who currently benefit from this program, and also help us expand our reach to more schools and more kids. New toys, valued at approximately $25 are purchased with donations and distributed to five participating Baltimore City schools. Each interactive toy puts a smile on a child's face, encourages their imagination, and helps them hope beyond their current life circumstances.
By establishing this project as a year-round fundraising effort, we will be able to better plan during the pre-Holiday season to potentially expand the number of participating schools and the number of children impacted. The interactive toys provided provoke thought, problem-solving, imagination, and creativity while offering comfort and joy to children who may otherwise go without a gift. Our long-term goal is to impact more challenged children year after year through gift-giving.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
