Camas High Senior Blake Deringer Seeking Toy Drive Donations

For his Senior Project, Camas High School (CHS) Varsity track star, Blake Deringer, is collecting toys to be donated to the East County Family Resource Center as Christmas holiday gifts.

The goal of Deringer’s Toy Drive, which goes until December 12, is to gather 200 toys for local needy families. He says that amount of toys will help out 60 families.

Donation barrels have been placed at the following locations:

• Camas Public Library
• Washougal Sport and Spine
• Camas High School

“Our goal is to get 200 toys delivered by the deadline,” said Deringer. “We got 15 donations so far, but we just started.”

His campaign is requesting unwrapped toys for children preschool through fourth grade.

“Once we collect all the toys, we will take them to the Family Resource Center, and they will wrap the gifts,” said Deringer. “December 12 is a hard deadline.”

Senior Projects are mandatory for CHS seniors, which requires a well-thought plan, a review board, a mentor, and a certain number of hours.

“I honestly just got involved with the resource center and thought this would be a cool senior project,” said Deringer. “I haven’t done a lot of service projects before and was amazed at how many people who are in need. I realized this is something I could get behind. Really, I had no idea there were so many people in our local community that are homeless or in need. It really blew my mind. It’s really humbling seeing people going there asking for things on a everyday basis. It’s nice that I can help with that a little bit. I will definitely continue working with them after my senior project.”