Cerritos College employees gathered toys for local fire departments at their annual holiday reception on Thursday, Dec. 11.

Presidents’ office Administrative assistant Julie Mun said, “It’s the annual holiday reception for our employees. It’s just an end of the year celebration where everyone can come enjoy the food and just mingle with each other.”

Employees were welcomed by Santa and a photo booth with Christmas themed props.

The holiday party was well attended by a large amount of employees who lined up with an assortment of toys of every age group to donate.

The Culinary Arts program provided employees with delicious foods, refreshments and desserts.

There were trays full of chicken skewers, meatballs and tacos. For refreshments there was black tea, lemonade and coffee to enjoy with the pastries.

Music major Zineb Fikri,who performed with the music band that afternoon said, “It was a lot of fun, the Vice President couldn’t make it so last minute Dr. Betancourt asked me to step in so I learned the songs really quick.”

The songs performed were: “Sleigh Ride,” ” Rocking around the Christmas Tree” and Feliz Navidad.

The local fire department that is located across the street were among the attendees to collect all the donations. These donations were going to the “Spark of Love Toy Drive.”

“The Spark of Love Toy Drive is a California initiative through local fire departments, like ABC7 has big “stuff-a-bus” events, but we have one here and we collected 277 toys,” Mun said.

For several years, ABC7 and firefighters joined to run the “Spark of Love Toy Drive” that collects unwrapped toys to serve children in our communities.

The “Spark of Love Toy Drive” takes place in November and December every year.

This year the first “stuff-a-bus” event kicked off at Los Cerritos Center mall.

Employees that participated in the donation process were eligible for raffle prizes.

“I think that it was very important for employees to donate, because I know a lot of students don’t have the means to be able to do that so at least someone is actually able to do it,” Fikri said.