Collections pour in for young patients
For their 4-H service project, Ashley Holland and Taylor Inglett, fifth-graders at Euchee Creek Elementary School, thought they would collect a few toys, videos and books for the patients at the Medical College of Georgia's Children's Medical Center.
Katie Lawhead (from left), coordinator of community
donations at Medical College of Georgia, looks at donations with Ashley Holland, Taylor Inglett and Jessica Barnes.
Photo by Lynn Davidson
However, after one week of advertising at their school, the girls were surprised to find they had collected about 200 items.
"We didn't think we would collect this many things," Taylor said. "We're very thankful for everybody who gave."
Joy Marchbanks, Ashley's mother, drove Ashley and Taylor and their classmate Jessica Barnes to deliver the donations to MCG on April 1.
The girls balanced boxes of videos and books onto wagons and rolled them inside to Katie Lawhead, MCG's community donations coordinator.
Lawhead said the Children's Medical Center receives many such donations and that all are needed.
The center gives out 200-300 toys each week in the Dino-store to children who have undergone surgery. She said the center only accepts new toys in their original packaging as a means of infection control.
Lawhead said she was thrilled to see the girls had brought about 150 children's videos and 40 books.
Lawhead said there is a TV and video cassette player in each room and each examination room. The videos and books will go to the Family Resource Library for patients to check out.
"The videos are watched many times, they don't last long," Lawhead said. "We have a hard time finding them because everything is going to DVD."
The girls said they came up with the idea because Ashley's father works at MCG and they knew of the need.
Ashley printed up flyers that she and Taylor posted around the school, requesting items for the center.
"It means so much more when the kids spearhead the projects and do it themselves," Lawhead said.