Thousands of holiday gifts given to families in need throughout Capital Region

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) - Nearly 5,000 children and families in the Capital Region received the items on their Christmas wish lists on Wednesday. Broadview Federal Credit Union partnered with 75 nonprofits in the region to get the wish lists, buy the gifts, wrap them, and then deliver them to the families in need.

Staff members at Broadview started the holiday project this year back in August and have been doing the tradition for over three decades. The CEO of Broadview, Michael Castellana, said that the effort has grown significantly over the years, and about $200,000 worth of toys and items were purchased this year alone.

“It was again over three decades ago," Castellana said. "We started with six children and a dress-up Santa because we couldn’t get the real Santa, and now if you look around we’re talking about 5000 kids.”

The gifts were loaded up into vans and brought to the nonprofit organizations in assembly line fashion. The toys have been stacked for months in the auditorium of the operation center at Broadview in Albany and organized by each nonprofit. Kathy Lanni, the Chief Community Officer at Broadview, said that often times the wish lists the company received had a list of necessities instead of toys, which pushed the staff to make sure each child had a gift to open on Christmas, even if it was not on their list.

 "We get the wish lists back and very often it’s just needs, so there are not very many wants there," Lanni said. "So we try to make sure that we fill in those gaps. Some of those wish lists are kind of sad, you know, when they need cleaning supplies or a mop or diapers or formula or clothes, and you think 'Geez that wasn’t the wish list I made when I was a kid,'”

One of the nonprofits getting the gifts is St. Catherine's Center for Children. The executive director for the Foundation for the center, Michele Puleo O'Hare, said that St. Catherine's will gift 24 apartments holiday presents, which makes a big difference for some families.

"We had one family that was a single parent with 10 children, and it’s really important that they celebrate the holidays like everyone else," O'Hare said.

The first round of gifts was brought to the YWCA in Troy, where the executive director Startletta Renee, said that getting a gift means a lot for the women living there.

“For our women it’s the chance that somebody else has seen them and has heard them," Renee said.