Austin, Help Brown Santa Provide Gifts to Children this Christmas!

Austinites: Brown Santa desperately needs your help! The Travis County Sheriff’s Office Brown Santa Program is hoping to help over 2,000 families this Christmas season, yet its toy bins and food shelves stand dangerously empty.

What’s the situation? This holiday season, cash donations to the organization have been at their lowest ever, while applicant families needing gifts have been at the highest. Not only this, but Brown Santa has been receiving dozens of overflow applications from Austin’s Blue Santa and Christmas Bureau Programs.

Volunteers at Brown Santa request the following items ASAP:

• Cash donations
• Non-perishable food items
• New toys for ages 0-14, boys and girls
• Puzzles, books, stuffed animals

Cash donations can be mailed to Brown Santa, P.O. Box 207, Austin, Texas 78767-0207. Toys and non-perishable foods can be dropped off at any HEB in Travis County. Donors can go to the website at www.BrownSanta.org for a list of all drop-off locations. Donations also can be brought to the warehouse at the corner of Technology and McNeil. The street address is 12317 Technology Blvd., Suite 300, and it is very close for donors coming from Austin homes in Milwood and Great Hills.

Brown Santa is a community service program of the Travis County Sheriff’s Office that started in 1981 with a few deputies helping about 25 families in the unincorporated areas of Travis County.

“Brown Santa helped 1,957 families in the 2011 season for a total of 19,219 men, women and children. We hope to do the same for the 2012 season,” says volunteer Susan K. from her home in Seven Oaks.

Visit www.tcsheriff.org or call 24-SANTA (247-2682) for more information. Please donate, volunteer, or spread the word, and help Brown Santa fulfill its mission to give Austin-area families a merry Christmas morning this holiday season!

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