Kids will once again be smiling across southeastern Manitoba. Community Christmas hosted another successful toy drive collecting hundreds of toys.

The need was great again this year with South East Helping Hands stating that they needed to fill 750 hampers in Steinbach and area and then another 150 for Grunthal's Caring Hands food bank. Amongst all the food, they also needed to collect around 1500 toys.

"It's been absolutely awesome," said Pamela Kehler who is the organizer of the Steinbach food bank's toy collection. "This community really responds, it's awesome."

Kehler says they are still sorting through all the toys, but her early indication is that they have successfully met the need in the southeast for another year. Kehler adds that they need close to 1200 for Steinbach and area, and then any of their surplus will be given to the surrounding food banks.

"Right now we are doing last minute updates, and we are good to go for the hampers today," Kehler said. "We still have to unload more toys and then see which age group is short. Usually we need to top up the teenager age category."

Now that all the toys have been donated, it's time to start wrapping. Kehler says they have teams of six wrappers come in at a time to get all the toys ready to be put under Christmas trees throughout the region.

"I thought that I would like to get involved in this aspect of it as well," said Kathy Penner who has volunteered with the food aspect of the hampers in the past, but decided to switch to wrapping this year.

Southeast Helping Hands was packed full of food, toys and the Steinbach Pistons Friday, who were helping fill up the hampers. Penner said that seeing all the food, toys and people was a little overwhelming.

"Wow, how does it all stay organized," she said. "How does it get to the people that these hampers are destined for?" But every year the volunteer staff successfully packs and delivers to meet the need. "We have our system here in the toys area, working around people that need to go in-between us," added Kehler.

The first set of hampers will be delivered this weekend.

Volunteers are busy wrapping toys that were donated over the past couple of days