Local church gives toys to Baldwin families

The Fellowship Center gave away over a hundred toys to underprivileged Baldwin children at their annual toy giveaway on Christmas Eve.  

The Fellowship Center, a Baldwin based religious organization and church, invited over 75 parents and children to their toy giveaway on Christmas Eve December 24, from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. at their church located on 1852 Grand Ave.

Lead Pastor Tobias Hall said they gave away over 100 toys to children and the Baldwin community. He said church members through gifts and monetary donations donated about 80 percent of the toys to the Fellowship Center and the rest of the toys were submitted by a combination of local sponsors and local Assemblywoman Judy Griffin’s.

Hall said Assemblywoman Judy Griffin’s office got in touch with him a week prior to Christmas Eve in December 2018 and asked if they could also donate toys, her office has been a partner of the Fellowship center since that day four years ago. 

Hall said this is the fourth year they’ve held the toy giveaway, and it furthers their mission at their church. Hall said his church follows the “Touching Lives and Empowering Nations” motto, the idea to use a faith-based organization to support the needs of members in the community. 

“We have families from all socio economic experiences, and one of the things that we identified is that, for whatever reasons, people are all facing different financial inequities,” said Hall. “We wanted to be able to lift the burden of family.”

Hall said the Fellowship Center came up with the idea for a toy giveaway to address some of those needs. He said the first outreach initiative the church part took in 2019 was in partnership with Angel Tree, a nonprofit organization that allows parents of incarcerated children to give their children gifts on behalf of the parents. He said they partner with Angel Tree each year but in 2020 they expanded the events scope to give toys to all underprivileged families in Baldwin.