Volunteers grab bags of toys for waiting parents at the Children’s Cheer and Toy Shop Thursday. Each bag contains two or three new toys, categorized by gender and age, and is valued at about $15 or $20. From left are Kaden Cox, Marcus Anderson, Julia Tucker and Alex Bledsoe.

MOULTRIE, Ga. — The elvish toy machine may have been in high gear at the North Pole Thursday, 18 days before Christmas, but Santa’s helpers in Moultrie were even busier.

The Children’s Cheer and Toy Shop distributed toys to the parents of less-fortunate children Thursday, giving them plenty of time to wrap them at home or prepare them for delivery by St. Nick on Christmas morning.

The shop opened in the 1980s and is operated by the social workers at Colquitt County schools. The social workers identify children whose family financial situation makes Christmas giving difficult, and they make available to those children’s parents a selection of donated toys to help make the holiday brighter.

The first year, the shop served 936 children. This year, it expects to serve right at 1,800, according to director Angie Kling.

Kling said each child gets a bag with two or three new toys. Older kids tend to get two rather than three, but they tend to be more expensive, she said. Each bag is worth about $15-20, she said.

While volunteers are getting the pre-bagged toys from a storeroom, the parents are also able to select a used toy that’s been cleaned up and made “good as new.”

Several organizations have done toy drives through the year, Kling said, and a lot of individuals have given too.

She particularly mentioned the Shane Willis Toy Drive at Southern Regional Technical College. Willis was a student at what was then Moultrie Technical College when he succumbed to cancer in 2000. He had been an active volunteer at the Cheer and Toy Shop before his illness, and the school’s chapter of the American Drafting and Design Association began the drive in his memory.

Her gratitude extended to the Moultrie Police Department, which donated bicycles that had been found but never claimed; to R.B. Wright Elementary School, which held a race in which the admission was a new toy; and to the U.S. Marine Corps, whose Toys for Tots campaign covered the shop’s list of 9- through 12-year-olds.

“That was a huge blessing to our budget,” she said.

Volunteers came Thursday from Tyson Steel, the American Legion, Southern Regional Tech, Publix, multiple local churches, Colquitt County High School’s Peer Leaders, the American Red Cross, and of course from the social workers’ colleagues at the Board of Education.

Chick-fil-A was providing lunch, and local funeral homes provided tents to keep the line of parents dry in Thursday’s rainy weather.

“It takes the entire community backing this, it really does,” Kling said.