For 12 hours a week Kay Barber-Eck trades the office environment of Microsoft, where she works as an executive assistant, to work in a warehouse sorting toys and books.

No, it’s not some part-time gig to make ends meet: Eck is a volunteer, helping the Eastside Baby Corner in Issaquah sort through the thousands of items donated each week to help Eastside children stay warm, stay fed, and stay entertained.

Eck, an Issaquah resident, was prompted to volunteer at the center after 20 years of volunteering with the Issaquah School District, which came to an end after the last of her children graduated.

“What prompted me to come here was the empty nest,” Eck said. “I no longer had the schools to volunteer for.”

A search of Microsoft’s internal volunteerism database revealed the Eastside Baby Corner to Eck, who is now in her second year of volunteer service. In 2013, Eck spent 221 hours helping at the center.

Each week, Eck helps to stuff more than 200 bags with toys, books, clothes and shoes to fill orders placed by service groups throughout the Eastside. The 169 programs and groups that receive help from Eastside Baby Corner include schools, hospitals, the YWCA and the Salvation Army. Despite the name “Eastside Baby Corner,” the center helps provide for children into their mid-teens.

“We process orders for care providers, we don’t do direct service here,” Madeline Fish, operations manager, said. “We process maybe 1,000 orders a week … Every clothing bundle includes the stuffed animals, the shoes, the toys, and Kay is helping us to get all that organized.”

While Eck and other Microsoft groups and employees are an asset to the center for their volunteer hours, the Eastside Baby Corner also benefits through the Microsoft Employee Giving Program, which matches employee donations dollar for dollar, and gives $17 per hour of volunteer work, with an annual limit of $15,000 per employee. To date, Microsoft employees volunteering at the Eastside Baby Corner have raised $6,681 for the center, buying consumables such as formula and diapers.

For Eck, the benefit of her work doesn’t lie just with Microsoft’s contributions, but with her own sense of service.

“It is so easy to just fill a bag, but every bag there is a name attached,” she said.

Despite ongoing community support and donations, the center is always in need of items. When the Reporter visited the center, Fish said that the center was in need of bedding, clothes and shoes for school-age boys, and toothpaste.

“There is never a generic order,” Fish said.

For more information on how to make a donation or how to volunteer, visit www.babycorner.org