First Posted: 9/8/2014
Katie Callahan was visiting the Pittston Care and Concern Free Health Clinic with her three children, sons Jake, 10 and Finn, 8 and daughter Gigi, 4, to donate children’s clothing when she noticed another family leaving the clinic.
A young mother and her four young children were all carrying bags of clothing.
Callahan’s sons noticed the family as well and were in disbelief to what they were witnessing, for they did not realize exactly where their donated clothes were going.
A few nights later Callahan, 44, a preschool assistant at Wyoming Seminary, was walking through her house when she tripped over a few of her children’s toys. That sparked the idea of something, so she brainstormed with her sisters, Eileen Rosen and Liz Vanesko, and her children to find a way to donate the extra toys to those who need it.
Callahan proposed the idea to Msgr. John Bendik who was more than happy to find space for them at the clinic.
“Katie and Eileen and Liz came up with the idea of doing this, submitted it to me as a possibility and so I ran with it,” said Bendik. “I told them whatever they needed, we would make it happen.”
On Wednesday, Callahan saw the vision become a reality when the Pittston Care and Concern Free Health Clinic opened the Toy and Book Corner.
“Our purpose in making this is to reach out to those families in need in the Greater Pittston Area who don’t have enough money to buy books or toys or art supplies for their children,” said Callahan. “What we want to do is we are hoping, and praying, that the community will keep those donations coming in so no parents on their child’s birthday ever has to not give a present to their child, or on Christmas.”
Members of the Greater Pittston Area can donate toys and books to the Toy and Book Corner and anyone in need of an item can visit the corner from 5 to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays and choose an item.
Callahan said there is a method to how the operation will be run, so that nobody is taking too much at once. Families will be limited to taking one toy and three books per child per visit and can only take items once every six weeks.
“Our reason for putting those limits on, quite frankly, is to make sure that we reach out to as many children as possible,” said Callahan, “with the thought of thinking that it’s really more important that every child should have some sort of book or toy in their hand, so the more that we can reach, the better.”
Bendik opened the Toy and Book Corner by blessing the room and the items it contains, also offering the blessing for people who volunteered their time to help with everything.
“We’re sort of blessing it in the first place because we had people willing to do this,” said Bendik. “It’s sort of amazing when you look in there all of the toys and books we received and that’s not from a whole lot of people. People just recently heard about it and brought things, so what we’re going to bless is that room so that children who come in there will get excited about what they see and exited about reading, too. The blessing is to say ‘This is why we’re doing this.’ For our children, because they are blessed about their lives and this experience is something that will lift their hearts.”
The children in attendance of the blessing were those of the volunteers of the Pittston Care and Concern Free Health Clinic and they took advantage of the room full of toys and books. Even though none were for them that did not prevent them from, as Callahan said, “testing them out.”
She said her own children, as well as her sisters’ children, played a big part in putting it all together. Callahan believes it may have had something to do with the experience her boys had when they watched that family leave the clinic with bags of clothes.
“As a mom, and as a working mom, my time with my kids is limited so my sisters and I all said, ‘We want to give back to the community, so what can we do,’ but we do don’t want to just leave our kids somewhere else, we want them to be a part of it,” said Callahan. “They’re helping us do this; they’re learning about giving back and we get to spend time with them. They’ve been all in here cleaning toys, testing toys, so they’ve really been a huge part of it all.”
Callahan stressed that volunteers are needed to help run the Toy and Book Corner and that volunteers do not need to be a member of the St. John the Evangelist Parish or even share the same beliefs as the parish to be a volunteer.
