CFISD Athletics Partner with Tide Dry Cleaners to Donate to Toy Drive
CFISD student-athletes, coaches and campus athletic programs collected and donated thousands of toys in November and December for children in Harris County Protective Services through the CFISD Athletics Leadership Initiative BE A Resource (BEAR) toy drive. Tide Dry Cleaners partnered with CFISD athletics and its fleet of vehicles helped pick up and deliver donations for the second-year project.
BEAR is the only non-profit organization that provides assistance and resources for at-risk and CPS-involved children and their caseworkers in the greater Houston area and the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Its annual toy drive is centered around helping the approximately 16,000 children in Harris County Protective Services.
Campus athletic departments, individual teams and student athletic leadership teams coordinated collection drives for new toys for children of all ages. Donations were then picked up and delivered to the BEAR warehouse.
In all, delivery vans were filled more than 20 times with donated toys to be delivered.
“I sincerely appreciate the efforts of so many of our secondary campus athletic departments to support the BEAR organization’s annual Christmas toy drive” said Ray Zepeda, CFISD director of athletics. “The overwhelming efforts of so many athletes, coaches and community members resulted in over 20-plus vanloads of toys being delivered to the BEAR organization on behalf of our athletic department and community. We also are so appreciative of the local Tide Dry Cleaners in our area that facilitated the pickup and delivery of the toys that were collected. This was a true partnership between our organizations that will benefit so many kids receiving services from the Harris County CPS organization. One of the three pillars of our athletic department is excellence in service to our community. It is so gratifying to see this foundational pillar lived out in such a tremendous way by our athletes and it is a reflection of the wonderful community that is CFISD.”