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Toy donations are being collected inside the Swain County Heritage Museum and Visitor’s Center.
Hannah Styles
hstyles@thesmokymountaintimes.com
The Swain County Family Resource Center provides food, clothing, and other supplies to those in need in the community, and every holiday season they collect gifts to provide children in the community with a magical Christmas that they might not have otherwise.
“Any family in need can fill out an application at our office to be considered for the program,” Swain County Family Resource Center director Melissa Barker said.
The gifts and supplies are provided by donations from community members, local organizations, businesses, and churches.
“A lot of the churches and groups in the county pick several families to sponsor each year, which is coordinated through our office,” Barker said. “This year we expect to help about 300 kids, through these donations.”
The center is currently taking applications for the program and still needs sponsors to “adopt” families to support.
“We are still in need of sponsors, and they can get the sizes and information for the children and shop themselves or they can make a monetary donation and we will shop if they prefer,” Barker said. “We will work with them in any way we can.”
You can find toy and canned food drop off boxes for FRC in the lobby of the Swain County Heritage Museum. Swain County Social Services works with the resource center to refer families to the program.
Some donations come from local churches. For example, Victory Baptist Church has an “Angel Tree” where people pick an “Angel” from the tree that has a particular gift a child wants, like an outfit or specific toy.
Amber Shuler oversees this year’s Angel Tree at Victory Baptist.
“The Angel Tree is with the Family Resource Center and this year we have one anonymous family we’re helping, not through the center and then we have three families from the family resource center with about three kids each,” Shuler said. “We are happy to help families in need.”
Inmate gift program
Another toy drive back again this year is the Swain County Sheriff’s Office inmate gift program. Last year Sheriff Curtis Cochran started the gift exchange to inspire inmates to strive to be with their families instead of behind bars.
“We hope they realize that they need to be home with their children and not in jail. Maybe this will inspire them to do better,” the sheriff said.
The office collects toys for inmates to pick a gift for their children or grandchildren and have a supervised gift exchange inside the sheriff’s office conference room, where they can spend quality time with their families, who they might not have seen in a while. Sheriff’s Office Administrative Assistant, Janet Cochran, decorates the conference room complete with Christmas tree, Santa Clause, elves, and said they are happy to be doing the program again this year.
“We are currently collecting toys and will begin having the gift exchanges soon,” Janet Cochran said on Tuesday.
To donate or to get involved, contact the Swain County Family Resource Center at 828-488-7505 or the Swain County Sheriff’s Office at 828-488-0159.