Tenth Annual Totes 2 Tots Suitcase Drive

Georgia Cancer Specialists Kennestone office, at 340 Kennestone Hospital Blvd., Suite 100, Marietta will participate in the tenth annual Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Totes 2 Tots delivers new or nearly new backpacks and kid-sized suitcases to foster children in Georgia—from infants to teenagers—many of whom must shuffle their belongings from home to home in garbage bags during frequent relocations.

To participate, simply drop off a new or nearly new bag.

The annual volunteer event was first launched in 2003 and has collected and distributed more than 25,000 bags. Originally held on Martin Luther King Day as a way to honor Dr. King’s vision and give back to the community, Totes is now held on the Friday before MLK Day as a kickoff to a weekend of service.

“Totes 2 Tots captures the spirit of Georgia Cancer Specialists and our practice-wide commitment to helping others," Georgia Cancer Specialists Chief Operating Officer Dr. Wendy Hawke Lenz said in a news release. 

"By hosting the event to launch the Martin Luther King weekend, we believe that we honor Dr. King’s dream as we provide tangible reminders to the foster children in our state that someone cares about them,” Lenz said in the release.

GCS partners with the Division of Family and Children’s Services to distribute the bags in the counties in which they’re collected.

"The program represents compassionate recognition of the trauma often involved for children impacted by the child welfare system," said Department of Human Services Commissioner Clyde Reese in the release.

"Having a decent traveling case or overnight bag to carry a child's belongings may seem like a small thing, but, in reality, these totes contain not only quickly gathered items but the fears, uncertainties, hopes and dreams of children caught in a whirlwind not of their own making," Reese said in the release.