Gift-giving gesture grows to thousands of toys given in hospitals

In 2016, seven-year-old Zach Darner’s baby brother, Noah, was born with a congenital heart defect, forcing their family to spend time at the hospital so Noah could get treatment. One day, while at the hospital, Zach and Noah received toys to help alleviate their stress and anxiety. The gift, Zach says, brought him comfort, and inspired him to do something to help other kids who had to be at the hospital.

So Zach began to ask friends, family, neighbors, and community members for toy donations to bring to the hospital for kids being treated there over the holidays. His goal was to get 50 toy donations, he ended up with over 250. The next year, Zach and his family did the same thing: aiming to collect 1,000 toys, more than 1,500 came in.

By 2018, Zach’s toy donation project had grown into Kidzz Helping Kidzz, a nonprofit headed by an advisory board made up of 15 youth volunteers, from ages 10 to 17. The organization has added to the task of collecting toys, and also did outreach directed at children facing social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and works with Coffee Oasis and the Bremerton Backpack Brigade, which provide community resources directed at youth, and fighting food insecurity among Bremerton youth.

“It is completely the community making this work possible,” said Beth Friedman Darner, Zach's mother, who serves as executive director of Kidzz Helping Kidzz. “It truly takes a village.”

Now Zach is 14 and in the 9th grade. Kidzz Helping Kidzz has collected over 11,000 toys for this holiday season. The organization now has a warehouse, provided by St. Michael Medical Center, and receives toys from beyond Kitsap County — people from Pierce and King County have made donations, inspired by the work Kidzz Helping Kidzz is doing.

The operation has been successful in ways that Zach nor his family ever could have expected. After completing another round of donations at hospitals this week, including in Silverdale on Thursday afternoon, the group will have donated an overall total of 41,000 toys to children at St. Michael Medical Center, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital and St. Anthony’s Hospital. The amount of donations they receive now make it possible for them to give the surplus toys for the hospitals and emergency rooms to keep and distribute to kids year-round.

“It’s really inspiring to see people realize what an important necessity it is for children in hospital. It’s amazing to see the community rise up each year,” Zach said this week. “It’s pretty crazy.”

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Kidzz Helping Kidzz continues to grow holiday donations