Organizers of Christmas in the Wards <\/a>said this is the second largest local toy drive in the country. The event this year is helping more than 2,000 kids from 700 families to celebrate Christmas.<\/p>\nThe ballroom at McCormick Place was filled with smiles, cheers, and the holiday spirit for the event. <\/p>\n
Kimuelle Simmons and her family were among the hundreds who turned out for the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis feels so good because I was just telling them how are we going to do this for Christmas,\u201d she shared. \u201cHow are we going to have a Christmas this year because of the rent and all this other stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mother of six from the south side said her family is grateful for the extra support, especially during the holidays.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel a lot of love, flurries, wanna have teary eyes and stuff,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I\u2019m gonna stay strong right now and cry when I get home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kids of all ages walked away with a gift including high school senior Joelle Nixon. She\u2019s heading off to college next year and received a brand-new laptop<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means a lot to receive it and not have to pay for it and I\u2019m just very thankful,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The event distributed more than 10,000 toys. The giveaway also included winter coats, bicycles, flat screen televisions, and other electronics. Larry Huggins is the founder.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s truly amazing it just fills my heart, and I can\u2019t just thank people enough for the things that we do and the fact that they\u2019re here and when you look around this place everybody is smiling everybody is having fun,\u201d said Huggins.<\/p>\n
The giveaway brought together elected leaders from all 50 Wards for \u2018Santa\u2019s Workshop.\u2019 Everyone was under one roof for the same cause.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know when we look at Chicago, one in four children are at or beneath poverty and this is the day in which we erase statistics and let every child know that they matter that they cared so what we\u2019re doing today is giving an ounce of joy in the midst of everything that\u2019s going on in the city,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While the little ones are excited to open these gifts on Christmas morning, their parents said they\u2019ll never forget the kindness that made it possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Children in need across the city received gifts to help make the holiday a little brighter at the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":445807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,44679,5386,1818],"class_list":{"0":"post-445806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-christmas","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-illinois"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115716190743582767","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}