On Friday, the St. Thomas Aquinas College men’s and women’s soccer teams joined forces to help out at the Westchester SPCA. The teams helped to tidy up both the shelter and the Volunteer Cottage. While on site, the teams were divided into smaller groups to accomplish a list of taske. These jobs included raking the outdoor pens that are used for the animals, organizing the leashes used for dog walks, building new shelving units in the worspaces and storage facilities and cleaning up the trails surrounding the building that are used when volunteers walk the dogs.

The SPCA of Westchester is a No-Kill Animal Shelter located in Briarcliff Manor, NY. They find loving, new homes for an average of 1,500 animals each year & are the only shelter empowered to enforce animal cruelty laws. They have a low-cost Clinic on site.

To learn more please visit: http://www.stacathletics.com

Longwood Cheerleaders hosted a TOY DRIVE for the sick children at Stony Brook Hospital this past holiday season, as they do every year!

to learn more please visit: http://www.stonybrookchildrens.org/

Long Island Lutheran Mens Basketball after a short Christmas celebration with their families, traveled down to Charlotte, North Carolina for the Hoodie’s House High School Hoops Classic. To kick off the tournament, the team helped serve food to people in need.

Continuing their mission of giving back to the community, members of the Walter G. O’Connell Copiague High School Key Club, with the assistance of their advisor JoAnn Erwin, collected and donated hundreds of toys to the United States Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots program. Through the club’s toy drive, held each year in honor of Marine First Sergeant Samuel T. Erwin Jr. and veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, students successfully filled ten boxes with new and unwrapped toys.

Story and photo courtesy of Copiague School District

BROOKVILLE, N.Y. (Dec. 24, 2015) – On Tuesday, the LIU Post men’s lacrosse team showed its Christmas spirit, as it hosted its annual toy drive to benefit the Toys for Tots Foundation.

The student-athletes collected 100 new and unwrapped toys and distributed them out to the less-fortunate children of the community for the holidays.

“It is always great to give back to the community and bring a smile to a child’s face during the holiday season,” said Head Coach John Jez. “The team did a great job of collecting toys for this organization to benefit those in need.”

Local toy collection campaigns for Toys for Tots begin in October and last until mid-to-late-December. Members of the community drop off toys in collection boxes positioned in local businesses. Coordinators then pick up the toys and store them in central warehouses, where the toys are sorted by age and gender. On Christmas, the coordinators, with the assistance of local social welfare agencies, church groups and other local community agencies, distribute the toys to the children in need.

For more information on the Toys for Tots Foundation, please visit ToysforTots.org.