Nusenda credit union providing holiday joy with donated toys
Dec. 11—It's not uncommon to see a U-Haul truck parked at a storage unit. But on Monday morning, one particular U-Haul was making two very special deliveries.
Employees from Nusenda Credit Union dropped off boxes and boxes of toys donated by community members to a storage facility on Monday morning. The donations, gathered during the credit union's sixth annual toy drive, will benefit University of New Mexico Children's Hospital patients.
The idea to start a toy drive at Nusenda was actually the employees', according to Sara Keller, the credit union's vice president of community engagement. "Our employees wanted to do something during the holiday season, so they brought (this idea) to us," she said.
Since then, the toy drive has grown ever larger. This year, Nusenda's 24 locations across New Mexico collected toys for both UNM Children's Hospital and, led by its Las Cruces branch, for Jardin de los Nińos, a Las Cruces nonprofit, early childhood education program.
"Nusenda has been around for a really long time, and at the core of our history is community and giving back," Keller said. "We hope we can provide a little bit of joy for families who are experiencing probably one of the hardest holiday seasons they'll have."
After Nusenda's efforts, Children's Miracle Network collects the donated toys at various storage units for distribution at UNM Children's Hospital-affiliated sites. There are 48 total care units on site at UNM Children's Hospital and at clinic locations around Albuquerque that receive the donated toys.
Lauren Kenig, program director for Children's Miracle Network at UNM Children's Hospital, explained that each UNM Children's Hospital clinic and care unit fills out an order prior to the toy drive collection, letting her team know the age groups they serve and some of their patients' toy preferences.
From there, Kenig's team sorts through the donations and fills bags with toys they feel are appropriate for a particular unit or clinic. The bags of toys are then set aside for pickup by representatives from each clinic or care unit, where they load up their cars with the presorted toy bags and ultimately hand them out to their patients. Roughly 3,000 toys have been collected and will be distributed this year, according to Kenig.
"We give the toys to doctors and the nurses so they have a chance to give back to their patients and create some smiles for their patients during the holidays," Kenig said.
While the window to donate toys through the toy drive has ended, Kenig encourages the public to continue donating toys to UNM Children's Hospital by calling its volunteer services department. Volunteer services will collect the toys and ensure they go to kids in need.
"We're just enormously thankful," Kenig said. "The fact that people stop and they think about other people in their community says a lot about our state of New Mexico."
