Our Story

Empties to Presents 1st Year

In 2022, the Venus family began cleaning up CFB Kingston during our family walks. We separated our trash and recycling. When we separated alcoholic empties from the recycling, our boys asked why. We let them know they had a cash value, and decided to brainstorm as to what we could use the money for. Naturally, they liked toys and we decided as a family, we could use the money to buy toys for children in need. We used our home as a collecting and sorting station. The first year, we as a family collected enough empties to buy $2500 worth of toys, that we ended up purchasing from The Rocking Horse, a small toy store in the heart of downtown Kingston, thereby supporting the local economy and then donating all of the toys to Toy Mountain. Then it was suggested we make a name for our initiative, and the Venus Family Toy Box was born.

Second Year

Our second year, the boys decided they wanted to set out a goal. They decided on a goal of $5000! During the year began to sell our signature bracelets with our name, Venus Family Toy Box and slogan, "Stay Safe and Stay Hydrated" on red on a yellow and white band. We sell these bracelets for $5! Throughout the year we continued to collect alcoholic empties, attempted to collect pop cans and receive monetary donations from members of our community as well as from family members back home. We successfully hit and exceeded the boys goal! We raised grand total of $6155! Then once again we purchased ALL of our toy to donate from The Rocking Horse.

Third Year

Our third year started no differently than the previous year, our annual goal was $5000. We worked hard all year round, collecting and sorting empties to cash in at The Beer Store. We sold our lemonade and Freezies at The Princess Street Promenade. We sold lots of our beautiful bracelets at all of our events, and to students of Queen's University. We pitched our initiative at 2 pitch parties, where on our second pitch we won a micro grant of $1000 from some great people at Awesome Kingston. In the end, we raised $10,135!

Fourth Year

In our 4th year, we continued strong and officially became a non-profit then added fancy keychains to our sales. We again surpassed our goal and reached a whopping $13,536! As per normal, we spent all of that hard earned cash at The Rocking Horse, supporting the local economy. We went back to our original roots, and a portion of our toys will go back to be distributed amongst the military families in need directly.

What's in Store for Year 5?

What will the Venus Family Toy Box do next?

Becoming a non-profit opens up a bunch of new possibilities for us, some that will not fruition until later this coming year. So expect to see more of us with bigger and better fundraising.

In our fourth year, we went back to our roots and started giving a portion of our toys to military families in need specifically. So we will continue this route even if it means saying goodbye to old relations and partnerships and hello to new. Our concentration needs to be majoratively on providing toys for the children of Kingston and area and less on other aspects. Although the other aspects may be important to us, we need to move forward and give more to those children in need.