College of Medicine

A student-led holiday drive is providing toys and essentials for children and families in need this season. Wish lists were picked up and fulfilled by College of Medicine students, faculty and staff, with gifts ranging from toothpaste, shampoo and diapers to a guitar, bicycles and a Wii gaming system.

First-year student Drew Williams, who helps lead community outreach for the Class of 2018, was familiar with community holiday needs from his previous career.

“I was a firefighter and paramedic for eight years in South Walton-Santa Rosa Beach, and we did an angel tree every year and sponsored about 300 families,” said Williams. “I wanted to bring something like that to the College of Medicine.”

As the holiday season approached, Williams and fellow first-year community outreach chair Arnold Abud began meeting with the Class of 2017 community outreach chairwomen, Angelina Malamo and Ariel Hoffman.

The students worked with Children’s Home Society (CHS) and the college’s Chapman Community Health Outreach Program liaison, Emily Kaltz (Class of 2017). They decided to help fulfill the holiday wishes of children from CHS and provide toiletries and essential items to Chapman.

“In our initial push before Thanksgiving, we made 40 tags of different toiletry items for the Chapman Community Health Program, and then we had 30 tags for Children’s Home Society,” said Williams. “All 70 of those tags went in the first three hours.”

The organizers were ecstatic. They obtained 21 more tags from the CHS and made 90 more for Chapman. All were fulfilled and delivered to these organizations for distribution.

Williams hopes this is just the first of what will become annual Garnet & Gold Toys & Toiletries drives.

“It was very exciting for us to see such an overwhelming response,” he said. “The fact that it has taken off as well as it did like this – in the first year to put out 181 tags – I think we absolutely want to continue it.”

Photo courtesy of Simon J. Lopez, M.S. (Class of 2018).