For close to 20 years, MCC Toronto has been a depot for the Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund, and began with about 500 boxes in Riverdale. Today, we deliver approximately 1600 boxes to needy kids in Riverdale and the Thorncliffe Park Drive area of Toronto. Delivering 1600 boxes is no small feat. It takes hours or preparation, many elves to sort the boxes, and about 80 elves to deliver them to the kids in their homes.
Delivery can not happen until the boxes are properly sorted, so, when Depot Coordinator, Mrs. Claus (aka Romelda Morson) receives her list of deliveries from the Santa’s Secret Warehouse, she goes to work back at her private North Pole, and sets to digitally routing the stops using some amazing mapping/routing software – Streets & Trips. It allows for importing the digital lists of addresses and plotting them on a large map, then from there smaller map routes are pulled out of the big route to form the individual routes.
Streets & Trips then allows her to print a map with all the route stops marked on the route, and a coordinating list of drop locations. From this list of drop locations, she assembles the route list for the driver to take with their map, and one in large bold print for sorting day to put on the floor so we know which boxes belong where. The digital routing process takes several days to complete and print all lists, maps and floor lists for sorting.