FXV Digital Design | Digital Marketing Agency
FXV Digital Design | Digital Marketing Agency

Meet 4 Doers in Berks County

Freddy Vasquez: Saying Thank you To The Universe

A circuitous excursion led Freddy Vasquez to the region, but he’s grateful he ended up here. So are his fellow Berks Countians.

Originally from New York City, where he got his start professionally making Myspace pages for fellow metal bands, he and his family moved to Florida for a job that lasted all of two weeks before the business closed. In 2009, they moved to Wyomissing, which they loved for its quaintness and its proximity to family and friends in New York.

In 2012, Vazquez founded the digital marketing agency FXV Digital Design. Years of successful networking allowed him to purchase the Wyomissing building in which it resides in 2019. That led to an epiphany, which led to the Awesome Toy Drive.

“The holidays came and I’m like, you know what, you’ve got to give back,”  the 45 year old says. “You have enough business that you were able to purchase a building on Penn Avenue. What are you doing to say thank you to the universe?”

His solution was to start a small toy drive. The children-focused nonprofit CONCERN was in one of his networking groups, so he reached out for a list of kids. He made 20 paper ornaments, putting one child’s name on each, and hung them on a Christmas tree in his office. He hoped 20 customers would pick an ornament and buy a gift for that child before the holiday season ended. Feeling nervous about hitting the goal, he and wife Jill, “I couldn’t have done any of this without her,” Vasquez says, bought one each for themselves and their two daughters. After he posted a video on Facebook explaining the drive, the ornaments disappeared in a matter of hours.

“But because, as my wife says all the time, you’re so freaking extra,” he didn’t feel satisfied with hitting his initial goal. So he asked CONCERN for 20 more names. Those ornaments were also snapped up quickly. So he asked for 40 more. By the end of the season, toys were purchased for 150 children

After the first year, he enlisted the help of local business owners, who allowed Vasquez to place ornament-filled trees in their places of business. The following year, more than 600 children received gifts. In the third year, the number topped 1,300. Today, nearly three dozen local businesses assist in the Awesome Toy Drive, which has expanded to help additional nonprofits.

And because he’s so extra, Vasquez also dresses as Santa for special-needs kids and assists with Baseballtown Charities’ Dream League, which gives children with physical and mental disabilities the chance to play baseball.

His overflowing spirit of service bleeds into his business as well. FXV Digital Design employees are expected to do community work, which includes helping with the toy drive. He made that stipulation because he wants his workers to see how fulfilling it is to serve.

“I’m all about giving back, dude,” he says. “There’s no way that you can be this successful in a place you’re not from and not give back. You have to support your community to say thank you. And if you help kids have better lives, they grow up to be better people. You’re investing in the future. And I’ll do that every day until I’m dead.”

Berks County Living, April 2024

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