WEST PITTSTON – The Greater Pittston Santa Squad is just one year old and, much to the amazement of founder Anthony Marranca, incoming donations from last year tripled as the group took in over 1,600 toys, making many area children happy this Christmas.
Last year, as a new organization, members of the Santa Squad were blown away when they were able to collect 445 toys that went to the West Pittston Salvation Army toy drive. The Salvation Army’s toy collection program had taken a major hit when its kettle drive lost two major sponsors.
Marranca caught wind of the situation and put a plan in motion to help out. At the early stages of the toy collection drive, he never expected to collect over 400 toys. Reaching that goal only encouraged him to step up the program, legitimizing the foundation by becoming a 501(c)3 non-for-profit status and putting a board of directors together.
“We will be able to deliver 900 toys and six bikes to the Salvation Army this year,” Marranca said. “We doubled our Salvation Army donation and we couldn’t be happier.”
Marranca said the Santa Squad spent approximately $7,000 in donated money to purchase toys while the rest of the toys were collected via collection boxes as well as from private organizations that collected toys.
“We’re going to hand out 1,600 toys before it’s all said and done to area agencies,” Marranca added. “We adopted and settled a Christmas list for 18 children with Luzerne County Children and Youth, donated 125 toys to Children’s Service Center, 100 toys to Domestic Violence Service Center and other various smaller organizations in and around our area. We also helped four children at The Gabriel House in Pittston.”
Marranca feels the success of the Santa Squad program is because of the response from last year.
“People noticing what we were able to do last year trusted us to do the right thing for this year,” Marranca said. “Being a registered charity helps and brings more clout, more credibility. People saw our dedication and saw what we took in went right out to the kids. It’s a testament to the people in the area having faith in us that we’re going to get the toys to where they need to go.”
Marranca feels he has a solid crew with the board of directors in place and plenty of volunteers to offer help. He also credits social media and newspapers with helping get the word out.
“Social media has been huge and our Facebook page since September has over 500 likes, having PayPal on our Facebook page has been a big help, and having the Sunday Dispatch and the Times Leader getting the word out has been huge,” Marranca said. “Probably half the donations this year have come from people we didn’t know last year at this time.”
Santa Squad will always makes toys for Christmas its main focus, but will branch out such as it did this past fall with a coat drive for St. John the Evangelist Church Care and Concern Ministries.
A shoes and socks drive is also in the works, although details have not yet been finalized.
According to Marranca, the squad will conduct another coat drive later in 2020 and attempt to have a sporting goods drive to benefit children in Puerto Rico who lost a large amount of sports equipment due to hurricanes that ravished the island.
“We’re working on some things and we’re definitely going to be active,” Marranca said. “We’re not going to sit around for 10 months; we’re going to do what we have to do to make things easier for people.”
