It is TOTY Time! The Toy Trade’s Should-Attend Get together for Play, Leisure, & Supporting Youngsters in Want
by PAMELA MASTROTA, Govt Director, The Toy Basis
Enthusiasm is constructing for the Toy of the Year (TOTY) Awards — the must-have ticket to kickoff Toy Truthful! Along with asserting the toy trade’s prestigious award winners, friends will likely be wowed with an unique efficiency from Grammy Award-winning artist Wyclef Jean; an public sale of standout merchandise and experiences; a cocktail reception to meet up with pals and colleagues; and extra. The most effective half? All of this enjoyable is for an ideal trigger supporting The Toy Foundation (TTF) in its efforts to ship the extraordinary advantages of play to kids in want.
Occasion proceeds assist TTF’s three program areas which unite the philanthropy of the toy trade and create a better affect. As YOUR Basis, our signature Toy Financial institution program has delivered toys to 31 million kids world wide since 2003. Because the trade’s associate in managing extra stock and company social accountability (CSR) initiatives, we decide up product donations and place them into the fingers of deserving kids year-round. One in every of our greatest collections of the 12 months is at Toy Truthful, and donating the toys and video games out of your exhibit on the shut of this 12 months’s occasion will assist greater than 50,000 kids within the New York Metropolis space.
Extending the trade’s affect to kids’s hospitals that serve communities of the best want, in addition to in response to emergency conditions, our Play Grants program has funded the facility of play for 360,000 hospitalized kids since 2021. A brand new playroom at Spence and Becky Wilson Baptist Youngsters’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, bedside medical play gear at Youngsters’s Hospital at Montefiore in Bronx, New York Metropolis, and inclusive and numerous toys at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Youngsters’s Hospital in Chicago are a only a few of the 2023 tasks which can be serving to kids categorical themselves whereas serving as a constructive distraction throughout procedures, and supporting continued studying and growth once they’re not within the classroom. We’re wanting to rally the trade on the TOTY Awards to supply pledges of $5,000, $10,000, and $20,000 to achieve much more kids.
To assist the trade in turning into extra numerous, equitable, and inclusive (DEI), our DEI Pipeline Program provides firms alternatives to attach with proficient college college students of various backgrounds and academic focuses. By digital conferences and in-person occasions, firms can hear the scholars’ insights on DEI inside the trade, share their very own philanthropic and CSR work, and probably rent for internships and entry-level positions. On the TOTY Awards and Toy Truthful, you’ll have alternatives to have interaction college students by means of a sequence of DEI actions, networking meetups, and recruitment alternatives.
We sit up for uniting small, medium, and enormous firms on the TOTY Awards to additional the affect of every of those packages, and we’re pulling out all of the stops to make that occur. You may be greeted with pleasure on the high-powered networking cocktail reception filled with enjoyable actions. The reception will move into the awards naming the easiest toys, folks, and campaigns within the trade, and a particular tribute to the icons being inducted into the Corridor of Fame. To finish the night time on the very best notice, Fugees legend Wyclef Jean will give an unique efficiency of pop-culture favorites like “Killing Me Softly With His Tune.”
Enjoying — in my case music — was extremely necessary for me to construct respect as a toddler. So, I’m delighted to assist The Toy Basis ship that very same energy of play to tens of 1000’s of youngsters who want our assist to seek out their voice.”
All through the night time and into Toy Truthful, attendees can bid on standout and one-of-a-kind public sale objects. Anticipated to be the most well-liked public sale merchandise, Wyclef Jean has pledged backstage entry and a chance to affix him onstage throughout a future efficiency.
The TOTY Awards will happen Friday, Sept. 29 at Cipriani forty second Road in New York Metropolis.
Tickets can be found at TOTYAwards.org.
A model of this text initially appeared within the 2023 TOTY problem of The Toy Ebook. Click here to read the issue, and click here to subscribe!
