Mother, daughter receive community support for toy drive

A toy drive initiated by a local mother and her daughter is responsible for putting some pretty big smiles on the faces of children in that part of the world this Christmas.

Holly Hoskins said it was her child's wish to help children without toys experience the joy of other children, and together they decided to undertake a toy drive on behalf of a Christian mission in El Salvador some college friends were involved with.

The mission, called His Heart's Cry, is dedicated to helping struggling children in El Salvador. In the month of December the organization holds meetings where they present as many as 8,000 children with gifts to show them they are loved. A shortage of gifts has left the organization canceling some of their meetings in past years.

Ms. Hoskins said her daughter emailed friends at the mission and told them of Genieva's idea. The mission's hope was to have 100,000 toys for the month of December.

The Grand Falls - Windsor mother and child, wanting to contribute a few, "maybe 50 or so toys," to that total called and emailed all of their friends and relatives. Those friends and relatives emailed and called quite a few of their friends and family members and the Hoskins were inundated with so many toys they could hardly fit them in their family room.

Not financially prepared to ship so many gifts by mail, the Hoskins made a public appeal through the Advertiser at the end of October to help send what amounted to 12 boxes of toys.

The response said Ms. Hoskins was overwhelming.

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