Episcopal First Graders Take Truckloads to Holiday Bureau

Thirty-two first graders at The Episcopal School of Knoxville spent time Tuesday loading enough toys, books, clothes and bicycles to fill a 26-foot U-Haul truck and then helped deliver them to the Holiday Bureau in Oak Ridge.

It was the culmination of the school’s 15th annual drive to help supply Christmas gifts for needy Anderson and Roane County families. The Holiday Bureau on Emory Road in Oak Ridge will take those items and refurbish them as needed in time for Christmas 2016.

The project is an eye-opening experience for these very young students, who plan the Episcopal School drive, solicit toys from others and give their own, and then sort and deliver them. The first graders have an able partner in the well-organized Holiday Bureau, which serves about 800 families yearly and operates wholly on volunteer effort. The Holiday Bureau has been in operation for 69 years.

“I think the best part of it is that we’re taking something that they’ve had in their possession and they are having to make a decision about giving that up for someone else to use,” ESK first grade teacher Chris Bishop said. “That is what we are all about at this school. That is our philosophy – ‘do unto others and you would have them do unto you.’ We have found a need and now we are finding a way that we can be helpful.”

Last year alone, the Holiday Bureau was able to provide over 800 families with new toys, bicycles and helmets, and to assist another 1,400 individuals with clothing.

The Episcopal School drive began with a school-wide call in early January for good, used toys. The first graders took the donated toys and stored them, first in bags in their classrooms and then in a giant bin behind the school gymnasium. Just prior to Tuesday, the delivery day, they sorted the toys into categories: things in bags, including clothes, things in boxes, such as games, and things with wheels, like bicycles, tricycles, and scooters.

On delivery day, the first graders with the help of parent volunteers loaded the sorted items onto the truck. In total, the items entirely filled one 26-foot truck.

Bishop, who has participated in the Episcopal collection project for each of its 15 years, said the first graders were surprised at the number of volunteers they found working at the Holiday Bureau and at how the building they visit is full of toys waiting to be refurbished prior to donation.

“The students get to the Holiday Bureau and get to see what the bike room looks like and how they have a bunch of seats and wheels and tubes that hanging ready to use to refurbish a bike so they get a better picture of what how it works,” Bishop said. “They always say ‘thank you’ to the workers at the Holiday Bureau for what they do. They realize the workers are the real heroes.

“The students are very proud of what they have brought in. This whole place was almost empty and now you can’t walk anywhere because of what we’ve brought in as a school.

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