As the story goes, Gabrielle Sanginiti sat on Santa’s knee one Christmas season to get a picture at the Oxford Valley Mall and Santa asked Sanginiti that all important question: “what do you want for Christmas?”
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“I want all the sick kids to have toys for Christmas,” she told the man with the white beard and red suit.
Her response, in retrospect, is telling in terms of what Saginiti does today.
Sanginiti is the president of Santa’s Helping Hands LLC, a 501 c3 nonprofit based out of Bristol.
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The nonprofit collects toy donations and distributes them to kids in the area, who for one reason or another, potentially will wake up Christmas morning to a giftless tree.
The idea came to Sanginiti when she heard a little boy talking to his grandmother only days before Christmas in 2008.
That little girl inside of Sanginiti, who sat on Santa’s lap, leaped into action put up flyers, collected donated toys and helped that little boy have a Christmas.
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“That year we were able to help 5 kids,” she said, almost embarrassed talking about what she had done.
“From there it took off,” Sangniti said explaining how her efforts further evolved and came to fruition in the forming of Santa’s Helping Hands as an LLC.
She posted a message on social media to contact her if anyone needed help.
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“The response by the community has been overwhelming,” she said, with over 60 people and businesses from the community helping last year’s toy drive.
In an effort to begin getting ready, Sanginiti and the bunch merry volunteers she has helping her will be at St. Ann’s School in Bristol on Saturday to kick off the toy drive for Christmas 2014 with a toy drive- fundraiser /vendor blender.
Our goal this year is to reach 350 kids, so we needed to prepare earlier this year with a “family-friendly event” with food, catering, face painting, games with plenty of prizes and Mother’s Day flowers last minute gifts for Mom, she said.
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Sangniti said last year alone they helped about 195 kids and expect to help many more little boys and girls from the region this year.
“It’s hard for Santa to keep up with the drastic increase of good girls and good boys,” she said, explaining why she is so committed to this effort as she holds her own little one, Dominic in her arms adding, “we’re Santa’s helping hands,” she said with the bright eye smile of kid discovering toys under the tree helpings kids aged 2-11.
With over 50 vendors coming to Saturday’s event, Sanginiti is expecting big things to happen for the Christmas season with more events to come as the holiday season approaches.
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Kids from any community in the Philadelphia area can receive gifts from Santa’s Helping Hands.
“We’re hoping to get members of the community involved from the entire region,” Sanginiti said.
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To volunteer as community representatives to collect toys and the names of good girls and boys in their area to help this year to expand efforts contact Sangniti at her e-mail Gabrielle.SantasHelper@Yahoo.com so you can also become one of Santa’s Helping Hands.
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