Ending 2020 On A High Note
It’s officially 2021 and we here at The Hub are hopeful this new year will bring in a sense of normalcy to our lives and our community. But before we dive into the new year, we wanted to take a moment to recap just how amazing our year ended as we hosted our 2nd Annual The Hub Christmas Give-A-Way Event, and just how amazing our community was in helping to provide toys and presents for hundreds of kids!
Ending 2020 On A High Note
In typical 2020 fashion, our Christmas Give-A-Way event looked a bit different this year. In the past, we had closed down our trampoline park to the public in order to allow families in need to jump for free and enjoy tasty treats and drinks, while parents “shopped” through piles of donated items to give as presents.
Due to covid restrictions and safety precautions, we knew we were going to have to get creative if we wanted to continue to offer our Give-A-Way event this year. So we decided to partner with Boys & Girls Club of Council Bluffs to help sponsor families in need. We had initially planned to sponsor only a handful of families, but after seeing the huge amounts of applications come in, we knew we had to find a way to help more families in our community. This is when we decided to reach out to all of you, families in our community, to help us help these families in need... and boy did you all come through!!
With the help from our community and donations from New Visions Homeless Services, we were able to give the gift of Christmas cheer by sponsoring 130 families!! Each child received five gifts (totaling over 1,500 toys!), along with free jump passes to The Hub Trampoline Park!
On top of that, we turned our Christmas Give-A-Way event into a drive-thru with festive stations! We encouraged parents to bring their kids to enjoy the festivities! First, each family was greeted with a stuffed animal or doll/truck. At the next station they were offered cookies and hot chocolate. Station three was a meet and greet with Santa and The Grinch. And then lastly, we loaded the gifts into the trunk of the parents car, in a sneaky way so kids had no idea their parents were picking up presents.
The night of our Christmas Give-A-Way event was a cold but memorable one. We are so thankful to everyone who sponsored a family, donated items, and volunteered their time in order to help make the event such a success. We are also very thankful for our partnership with New Visions Homeless Shelter, who was able to coordinate toy donations from the Toys 4 Tots program.
So while 2020 wasn’t quite what we all had hoped for, we are thrilled we were able to end the year on a high note!
