Mansfield ISD student named regional Toys for Tots Youth Ambassador

Hey, welcome back on this Monday morning. The Marine Toys for Tots has a program to empower young people to become leaders through service, volunteerism, literacy, and community outreach. And we say good morning to Abigail McCaslin, a Toys for Tots youth ambassador this year. Good morning to you. Good morning. All right, so you're a senior in Mansfield ISD. What is a youth ambassador? What do you do? Well, I work very closely with Mansfield ISD, and I've created a gift suggestion list. I'm a part of the promotion for the Toys for Tots toy drive that we hold in Mansfield. Okay, okay. And you've really been, you're very familiar with Toys for Tots. You've been doing this since you were a kid. Yes, I've been going, this is my senior year, so I've been going to the toy drive since I've been in kindergarten. My family and I have donated toys every year and I've started volunteering as I've gotten older and gotten into high school. Okay. All right. What's your favorite part about that? Oh my goodness. The ice slide. Overall. It's got to be the best part. The ice slide. Yeah. All right. Okay. So you've participated in all these toy drives. What have you done? Tell me about the work you've done in the school system and with your fellow classmates. Yes, every year my high school holds a pep rally, a teachers versus students basketball game to raise money for it. I'm the president of Key Club this year and we take the money that we raise from that and we go on a big shopping spree at Walmart the week before Thanksgiving and we buy a ton of toys to donate. Yeah, yeah. I remember when I first saw the kind of the whole process completed with you get the toys but then you see the families get the toys. And I'm sure you've had that experience as well. What does that mean to you, to know that you're part of that? It's just so wonderful to be able to see people in my community being affected by this. And we've been able to help people in our own community. It's not going to somewhere far away. You actually get to see the impact that you are making. Yeah, yeah. Now, you have other students that say they might be interested. What do you tell them? How do you get them interested in this? Hi, we are very good at getting students to go to this basketball game and we use it to get more people to go to the toy drive and donate a toy. And that's one of the ways that we get that we sell tickets is you can donate a toy instead of cash. And so that really helps. And it's during the school day. So more people can get involved because you don't have to go like you don't have to miss work. You don't have to miss practice that sort of thing. So it really helps get people involved during the day. That's good, that's good. And you've probably seen that moment with your classmates where they're like, hey, this is cool. Yeah, absolutely. I was one of those my first couple of years, so. All right, so you can find a toy donation campaign near you. You can head to the Toys for Tots website, or you can scan the QR code. I believe we have a QR code we can put up there on the screen. There's that QR code. You can scan that to find an interactive map, or you could even donate directly. You could also visit our website to get the information there. Fox 4, of course, a proud sponsor of Toys for Tots every year. All right, Abigail, thank you so much for your time this morning. Of course, thank you so much. Appreciate it. All right, stay with us. We've got more to come. It'll be warm today, cooler tomorrow, because we've got a front that brings storms through overnight. Allie has all the details on that next.