East Lake native Emondre Johnson, 23, embodies the spirit of “give back” with his nonprofit that provides area kids with toys.
It began with a joke. A dare.
Emondre Johnson was just out of Woodlawn High School four years ago when he shared a post on social media asking families in his East Lake neighborhood if they needed toys for their children at Christmas.
Called himself East Lake Santa.
The responses, as you are most certainly imagining, were no joke.
“I’ve always been the type of person who wanted to find ways to give back,” Johnson is telling me. “I took the momentum from the responses and turned it into giving back.”
He turned it Eastern Toys, a non-profit that provides Christmas toys to low-income East Lake families with children 12 years old and under.
If you want something to feel good about during this season of giving, if you need a reason to feel optimistic about our youth, to see light where there is too often darkness, the oldest of Elicia and Walter Johnson’s two boys (there’s also a sister), Johnson, now 23, embodies all of it.
He’s always been a bit of a rescue type, too. As a kid, while living with older cousins, he brought a live lizard into the house. “They tore me up about it,” Johnson recalls with a laugh. Oh, and there was the pregnant cat.
Johnson took his love for animals, for rescuing and nurturing them, north to Huntsville—attending Alabama A&M and earning a degree in animal science. He now works as a veterinarian technician (“I do everything the vet does but without the extra school they have,” he says) and plans to open a kennel soon.
Following the overwhelming response to his East Lake Santa social media post, Johnson took his nonprofit idea to Elicia. “She told me exactly what I needed to do to get started–to write down plans with everything I wanted to see out of the organization,” he said. “Then she with everything, from getting and wrapping presents to calling families to make sure their children got what they wanted.”
On Dec. 8, Johnson, along with much of his family—including Walter and Elicia—blessed 15 families, and their 47 children, with toys specifically purchased for them. Just as if they’d told Santa.
The families were distilled from 230 applications, the max Johnson accepted this year after receiving 330 applications in 2020. He reads each one. “All I did was read applications last year,” he said. “Wasn’t doing that again.”
Among the information families were asked to provide are the age and clothing sizes for each child, along with specific toy requests. That’s why so many faces lit as brightly as the lights on the tree behind them as they unwrapped the bundle of gifts.
In previous years, Johnson delivered gifts (“Wasn’t doing that again, either,” he said with a laugh) to the families. This year he hosted them at the Encore Theater & Gallery, a Black-owned facility on Gadsden Highway that, according to its website, “[presents and cultivates] works highlighting African American [projects] and performers.” There was food and games and words of encouragement from Johnson—after an uncertain start as families straggled in, with some parents coming without their children.
“I got frustrated,” Johnson recalled. “But at a point, everything started working out. I didn’t have any expectations for what would come out of it, so I just let it flow. I started thinking too much at the beginning. I calmed down and everything flowed, and I was able to get across what I wanted to say to the people who were there.”
Johnson wants to “create a positive cycle of giving back and supporting the community,” he says. “That starts with children–giving them toys and activity and empowering words. That sparks their creativity and their minds. Someday in the future they’ll take what was given to them give back to—that’s the cycle of positivity.”
He also hopes to embody for other young people they do not have to be rich superstars to enrich others. “A lot of people in our generation think you have to be somebody to give back,” he said. “People get in the mindset: ‘I don’t have nothing going, so I can’t do nothing.’ Anybody can be a leader. You’ve just got to get a plan and go with it.”
“We need each other to raise kids,” he continues. “The youth is the future to me. Whatever I can do to empower them in ways that allow them to create and accomplish their goals, I’ll do.”
Early in 2020, Johnson expanded plans for Eastern Toys to extend beyond Christmas. They were derailed by the pandemic—no, just denied, because he now intends to implement the plans. They include haircut, school supplies, and holiday turkey giveaways, along with scholarships.
“For the scholarship, I’ll ask them to write an essay about one thing they’d like to do to improve their community,” he says. “Then, along with the scholarship, I’ll show them how to do what they wanted to do to impact their community.
“That will be big for me,” he says, smiling. “They’ll think they’re just writing an essay.”
Just as a young man four years ago jokingly believed he was just creating a social media post.