As so many best-places-to-visit lists will tell you, there’s nowhere quite like northern Michigan. Mike Kent, assistant coordinator for Toys for Tots Northwest Michigan, agrees—but not just because of our beaches, bays, and food scene.

“We live and work in an extremely generous community,” he says in this week's Northern Express, sister publication of The Ticker. “And in the years that I have been doing this program, we have never fallen short.”

That’ll be true again for Toys for Tots this holiday season, even as more northern Michigan families find themselves in financial limbo between high housing and grocery costs and, for some, the extra overwhelm of the longest-ever federal government shutdown, which left tens of thousands of workers across the state without paychecks and now awaiting backpay. Though the government has reopened, the delay in SNAP food benefits has meant impacted families have to figure out how they’ll fill the fridge—never mind filling stockings.

Find out more about Toys for Tots (and how you can help) in this week's Northern Express, available to read online or free on newsstands at more than 650 locations in 13 counties across northern Michigan.