As shoppers head to the stores and take to cyberspace to do their holiday shopping, the staff at Real Estate One hope they’ll consider adding a gift to donate to Toys for Tots.

The Oxford branch of Real Estate One is collecting new, unwrapped toys for the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots campaign at its office in downtown Oxford (located at 110 S. Washington St.) during office hours until Thursday, December 14.

The Toys for Tots campaign is a national nonprofit organization which delivers new toys during Christmas to less fortunate children in every community it serves.

For the past five years, Oxford’s Real Estate One office has served as a collection site for the Toys for Tots campaign, according to Branch Manager Mary Matthews, with the hopes that the donations will help the children and families that depend on programs like Toys for Tots, which can provide a sense of normalcy for many that live paycheck-to-paycheck.

“We do this every year and the community has just been so generous,” said Matthews. “We’ve already just been having so many people from the community coming in and dropping things off. It’s heartwarming. And they feel so good when they come in and drop things off, too.”

The donation box will be stored in a secure facility before they are sorted, and eventually distributed, by age and gender — newborn through kids 11 and older.

Donated toys can vary in size, shape and value; however, items that look like weapons, gifts with food and stuffed animals will not be distributed. “We want to brighten every child’s Christmas that maybe wouldn’t have had one otherwise. It’s just one of those things we can do to make this a joyous season for all. We still have room for more toys and we just want the community to know to keep it coming,” Matthews added.

Employees at the real estate office also extended their giving spirit to U.S. veterans on Nov. 28 by hosting an in-house charity luncheon, which saw over $700 in total donations raised for the Wounded Warrior Project, a nonprofit organization that offers a variety of programs, services and events for wounded veterans.

Matthews added that next year, they are hoping to open the luncheon to the public.

“We wanted to extend Veteran’s Day at our office. It’s something near and dear to our hearts. We have a few Realtors that are veterans and we recognize the veterans every year at our sales meeting with a small gift card and a huge round of applause. We decided to take it one step further by celebrating ‘National Day of Giving’ on November 28. We wanted to make sure we were part of that as a company.”

For more information on Real Estate One’s toy collection, contact its main office at (248) 628-2800.