‘It’s the season of giving’: Local organizations donate toys to thousands of kids in North Omaha

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - Thousands of kids walked out Saturday afternoon with a gift of gratitude.

Black Votes Matter, Omaha NAACP, and the UNO Athletic Department partnered together to give kids never-ending toys to choose from.

“At the level of the children, they look for Christmas gifts and not everyone is able to afford Christmas gifts especially if there’s more than one kid in the household, even if there’s one people’s expenses for groceries is going up,” Preston Love Jr. said.

Preston Love Jr. is the Founder of Black Votes Matter. He says this is the third year they’ve held this event. All the toys that were available to kids were donated by UNO Athletes and by the community.

“This is an opportunity for our organizations and our community to give back out of love to all of these families and these wonderful kids,” Love said.

Apart from the giveaway, kids in the community got a chance to say hello to UNO’s baseball team.

Evan Porter is the head baseball coach at UNO he said he’s fortunate to be able to give back to the community. He also says UNO teams like cross country, track, and baseball decided to donate at least one gift to the giveaway.

“In the past year, women’s soccer has been involved and different teams,” Porter said. “Every year there’s certain teams that are able to help out.”

Porter also said this event was an opportunity for his team to venture out of their college campus.

“This community is eleven minutes from our campus and it’s not far at all,” Porter said. Preston was mentioning earlier how a gift can make a difference.”

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