Mount Saint Mary College students and staff sort and bag hundreds of toys collected during the college’s annual Christmas drive. The community gathered more than 1,000 gifts to support local children.
The spirit of giving is alive and well at Mount Saint Mary College, where the campus community recently collected more than 1,000 toys for local children during its annual Christmas toy drive.
Organized by Fr. Gregoire Fluet, Vice President for Mission and Ministry and campus Chaplain, the drive rallied students, faculty, and staff to ensure that families in the Hudson Valley would have gifts to open this holiday season. The donations will be distributed by Catholic Charities of Orange, Sullivan, and Ulster Counties to families in need throughout the region.
On-hand to help package up the toys for delivery were Assistant Athletic Director Mike Lowell and plenty of Mount student-athletes.
“This entire season – Christmas, Hanukkah, Three Kings, Kwanzaa – is a season of miracles and light that calls us to open our hearts to our neighbors,” said Fr. Fluet. “The Mount community has answered that call in a spectacular way. To see more than 1,000 toys gathered for local children is a beautiful reminder of what we can achieve when we come together in the spirit of giving and love.”
The annual drive has become a staple of the holiday season at the Mount, reflecting the college’s Dominican pillars of service and community. Since Fr. Fluet’s arrival at the Mount nearly a decade ago, the annual toy drive has collected thousands of toys for local children.
Located 60 miles north of New York City, Mount Saint Mary College is a private, liberal arts college dedicated to academic excellence and the development of the whole person.