SAN ANTONIO – The Salvation Army is spreading cheer to local families and distributing gifts to thousands of children this holiday season thanks to its Angel Tree program.
“What’s great about this program is that the whole community gets involved with making an impact to help others,” said Brad Mayhar, public relations/ media manager for the Salvation Army.
The Angel Tree toy distribution event kicked off Thursday morning.
“It’s all about the community. When the angels go up for adoption. Members of the community, they go, and they adopt a child and they purchase those toys that are on the wish list, and they bring them back here. And then we we fill the boxes up,” Mayhar said.
Due to the pandemic, several volunteers didn’t participate last year, but things looked different today.
“This year is great because we’re able to see a lot of our corporate volunteers come back,” Mayhar said.
About 7,000 children will be receiving a gift this year.
The program impacting not just families, but volunteers too.
“You see tears of joy from people that, you know, they’re so elated that they were able to provide gifts for their family. And with our volunteers, you get a lot of them that come in each year and tell us that once upon a time, they were an Angel Tree recipient. So, they want to give back,” Mayhar said.