Toy Drive for the Holidays

The Rubidoux HS Instrumental Music and Colorguard Program hosts a Toy Drive each year during the Holiday season, and donates the toys to our local community charity. It is a student led endeavor that began in 2017, and has since become a tradition for our program. Now that we have our newly built Concert Hall on our campus, we are able to make the event even bigger and more special for our community.

The idea came from seniors from the Class of 2018 after they had an amazing competitive marching band season, and they were expressing their gratitude for our campus and community support. They wanted to find a way to give back, and so the idea of hosting a Toy Drive was born. We had donated to different organizations in the past, but have since decided to give back to our community directly through Jurupa Valley Adopt a Family, a charitable organization in our city. It started off small since our only performance venue was our school gym, but since our Concert Hall was built on our campus in 2023, we were able to host a larger event.

We collected donations right after Thanksgiving, all the way up to our Holiday Concert a few weeks later. The cost of admission was a toy donation. Our colorguard members also hosted a free holiday craft fair for children, as well as face painting and photobooth. The main objective of this initiative was to give back to our community after years of support for
music and the arts in our schools. We are in a low-income city where resources can be scarce, but one resource that never feels lacking is the support they give to our students.

Students, Parents, Teachers, Administration, Community Members

We wanted to bring everyone together during the Holiday season to ask for donations for the Toy Drive. We advertised to everyone and anyone we could for two reasons:

1. Maximize our donations so we can give as much as we can.
2. Demonstrate that our program’s values were not just about fulfilling our program’s needs, but about where the hearts and intentions of our students in the arts fit into our community.

November

Week One: student committees are created and student leaders selected to head each committee

Week Two-Three: student committees meet with Director to discuss plans for each committee (craft fair, decorations, toy donations, advertising/marketing)

Week Four: advertising kicks off through flyers and social media

December

Week One: begin collecting donations, continue to advertise. Assign donations for crafts (sugar cookies, frosting, marshmallows). Decorate Concert Hall.

Week Two: Check on student committee duty completion, host Holiday Concert/Toy Drive

Week Three: Deliver donation to Jurupa Valley Adopt a Family.

Our student committees and their leaders planned and executed this initiative with minimal guidance from their Director. The student committees this last year were as follows:

• Marketing and Advertising Team, led by Rubie Enriquez and Andrew Chavez (Class of 2024)
• Toy Drive Committee, led by Jesus Martinez and Angel Corona (Class of 2025 and 2024)
• Colorguard Committee, led by Bianca Hernandez and Sarena Gutierrez (Class of 2024)
• Food Sales Committee, led by Erik Quintana (Class of 2024)

Students met during class, advisory (homeroom), after school, and in group chats to come up with plans for approval, then execute.

We learned through trial and error through the years to figure out how to run this event. We found Jurupa Valley Adopt a Family through advertisements of their own to the rest of the city.

Our student committee in charge of advertising and marketing came up with multiple ways to reach people. They created paper flyers through Canva, printed them out at the school library, and passed them out to their classmates. They also created digital flyers to post on our program instagram. Additionally, they had new marketing ideas through social media for this year. We had a program-wide gingerbread house making contest, and a student created a video to generate interest for voting for the best one at the Holiday Concert. We also invited one of our beloved English teachers on our campus to be a narrator in a piece we played for the concert, which generated some excitement on our campus and amongst alumni who had him before.

All of this, in addition to having our first Holiday Concert in the newly built Concert Hall, brought us a packed house. We ran out of seats and our assistant principal had to step in to help facilitate.

• Elf Hats for Colorguard ($19.99)
• Craft supplies ($231.91)
• Scavenger hunt supplies ($21.63)
• Holiday Decorations ($59.25)

A challenge we always encounter every year we do this is making the time for this initiative. Being in band, orchestra, or colorguard is busy enough, and after completing our competitive season, most programs look forward to taking a figurative sigh of relief before gearing up for winter and spring projects. It also coincides with college application season, the start of winter sports, and finishing up their first semester academic goals. However, our challenge is in the time, not necessarily the spirit; in spite of everything that is going on, our students look forward to the Toy Drive each year and make the time to make it happen.

We have always had a measure of success with our Toy Drive, but it was especially successful this last year. We were able to get over a hundred toy donations just from the event alone, and filled up my Toyota Prius to the brim with donations by the time we were able deliver the donation. Even after the event was over, we had people looking to donate. We ran out of seating in the venue, and many watched from the lobby tvs. 100% of our program’s students participated by either serving in the committees, performing on stage, acting as “craft elves” throughout the night, or manning the donation station in the lobby.

One of our program’s tenets is “We before Me”, and involving our students in an endeavor that is larger than their immediate program, or even their campus, opens them up to the world beyond their needs. Our community benefits not just from our donations, but from the understanding that our students are not just capable of working hard and dedicating their time to something larger than themselves, but are willing to take the lead to make it happen.

Anyone looking to start a Toy Drive should look at their local charities to see how they can give back to the community directly. We had done Toys for Tots before, as well as county-wide initiatives, but our students feel the most accomplished hearing their own city’s name.

Now that the event has gotten larger, we will need to find ways to have either additional performances, or limit the seating without affecting the amount of donations. I would also see if there are parents or alumni who are interesting in supporting this initiative, or if there are other groups on our campus that we can team up with.