Toys for Tots registration approaches

Local parents or guardians who wish to sign up for the Toys for Tots program must do so between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Nov. 28 through Dec. 2.

The sign-up period runs for one week only, cautioned Lisa Woolard, executive director of the Beaufort-Hyde Partnership for Children.

During that week, sign-up sheets may be filled out at the partnership offices, 979 Washington Square Mall, behind Belk in Washington.

“We don’t want to miss a child,” Woolard said.

Residents who complete the necessary forms must bring their children’s birth certificates, Woolard said. The certificates don’t have to be certified copies, but can be mothers’ copies, she explained.

Program participants will need to designate someone to pick up the toys at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Washington from Dec. 18 through Dec. 20.

Those who collect the toys must bring some form of identification, Woolard said.

There is no income-verification requirement for Toys for Tots, and anyone can take part.

This year the local initiative is serving children from birth to 12 years of age.

For more information, call the partnership at 252-975-4667 or visit www.beaufortcountykids.org.

Toys will be collected at various drop-off locations around Hyde and Beaufort counties through Dec. 15, said Rich Morin, Beaufort County’s Toys for Tots volunteer coordinator.

As always, donors are asked to place a new, unwrapped toy in the drop-off boxes scattered around the community.

“While we certainly expect a Marine presence for this year’s Toys for Tots campaign, most of the responsibility for this year (rests) with volunteers and county human service agencies,” Morin wrote in an email. “The Marine Toys for Tots representative responsible for Beaufort and ten other counties ‘vacated’ the post. Just a month ago, the Toys for Tots website had listed these 11 counties as having ‘no Toys for Tots’ for 2011. We are pleased that Toys for Tots is ‘alive and well’ through the efforts of these agencies and volunteers. We are fortunate, too, to be working under the direction and leadership of the Toys for Tots coordinator Vince Tesoro, out of Rocky Mount. He is our Marine contact and will be working to ‘bring in the Marines.’”

Locally, the program is spearheaded by the partnership and Washington (noon) Rotary in cooperation with the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation.