Volunteering with United Way for Toys for Tots

A big thank you to Toys for Tots, Salvation Army, and United Way of Rhode Island for providing a wonderful volunteer experience!

The WaterFire Providence team spent this morning bringing holiday cheer to local families in need. Inside the awe-inspiring hall of the Cranston Street Armory, we joined with other volunteers and sorted hundreds of toys, took inventories, and filled ourselves with holiday cheer. At this one location gift packages for nearly 3,000 Rhode Island families had already been bundled and were organized in long lines awaiting pickup. Even though most of the work for this year’s toy drive had already been completed our team was able to help the folks at the United Way get a head start on next year’s holiday season by pre-sorting toys for next year’s gift packages.

Yay! We did it. Thanks to Lori DiMatteo for the photo.

As an organization with such a big appetite for volunteers, it was great to be able to switch roles and become the volunteers ourselves. We hope there will be many smiling faces when these goodies are unwrapped!

Happy Holidays!

About the author

Tim Blankenship

Director of Special Projects at WaterFire | + posts by author

Tim Blankenship, newly appointed Director of Special Projects, is a 22-year veteran of WaterFire and a steadfast advocate for the organization’s mission to unite the community through shared artistic experiences. Having worked across multiple departments, including a decade in production and recent years with the creative services team, Tim brings unmatched institutional knowledge to his new role. He will focus on strengthening internal systems and supporting the creation of new visitor experiences at both the downtown installation and the WaterFire Arts Center.