The Editor:
When someone hands you a gift, there is no price tag attached. I am writing about the CAP “Community Toy Store” that accepts new, unwrapped toys as Christmas gifts, for impoverished children in Blaine and Birch Bay. These so-called “gifts” have a price tag.
I spoke to a woman years ago who helped start the Community Toy Store. She said the poor families in Birch Bay and Blaine can select from the donated toys for their children at Christmas, but they must help pay for them at a discounted price. She wants poor people to pay for free, donated gifts? In a very self-righteous voice, she told me it was very important that these people be given a sense of pride, because they are paying for the gifts. She called it a “hand-up, not a hand-out.”
This money generated from the poor then goes to fund organizations that support the poor, such as CAP itself, the Bridge Community Hope Center’s emergency fund, and Christ Episcopal Church’s “Loads of Love.” Do these places really need poor people’s money? The church uses this money to cover laundry costs on the first and third of each month, 5-7 p.m., at The Washhouse in Blaine – a very short two hours, twice a month. How generous. None of this passes the smell test.
The Community Toy Store recommends the donated toys be purchased from Barnes and Noble, Best Buy, Michaels, Hobby Lobby: these stores are expensive to begin with. The poor people pay 25 percent of the “gift’s” original price. Multiply this by how many children they have and it adds up.
Since when do we make poor people pay for community services that are supposed to help them, and make them pay for donated, free Christmas gifts for their children? They would have used this money to put gas in their cars, extra food on the table and help pay their car insurance, etc. I rest my case.
Cindy Kisska
Birch Bay
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