Time is running out to donate to this year’s Red Kettle Campaign for the Chatham-Kent Salvation Army.
2020 has been a tough year because of the pandemic, and they’re seeing that reflected in donations at their kettles.
“Our goal was $200,000, we were only able to raise to date $133,000, so we are short about $70,000 there,” said Community Services Officer Captain Stephen Holland.
The red kettles will be out until about noon on Christmas Eve. In Chatham, kettles are at the No Frills, Real Canadian Superstore, and Giant Tiger. In Wallaceburg they are at No Frills and Walmart, and there is a tap machine at Foodland in Ridgetown. The tap machine allows people to donate using a credit or debit card.
While donations in the kettles are down, Captain Holland said they’re getting more donations in the mail.
“We got more cheques from people who have come into our office and dropped them off. We’ve done really well on our overall total is $493,000. So I think we’ve done really well considering we only had a few kettles out.”
The Salvation Army’s overall fundraising goal is $500,000, and donations can be mailed in until the end of the year. All of the money raised stays in the community that collected it and goes to fund programs there.
“It enables us to buys groceries for our food banks, it helps us when we need to help people with medication, or maybe a little bit of rent, or whatever their needs might be at that time, it could be anything,” said Captain Holland. “So we try our best to use that money for those emergencies that come up in people’s lives.”
Captain Holland hopes they can reach their goal heading into the province-wide lockdown on Boxing Day.
“I don’t know what the future holds with the influx of people coming into our food banks who have been laid off now. The next 28 days being shut down, I don’t know what that will look like. It could cost us more to buy more groceries, but we’ll make do and do our best to make sure everybody gets the help that they need.”
The Salvation Army received a boost recently when AGRIS co-operative donated $10,000 to the Red Kettle campaign. That money will be dispersed equally across the Salvation Army zones that are located in AGRIS Co-operative’s trading area, including Chatham-Kent.
John Nooyen (left), AGRIS Co-operative board President and Jim Anderson (middle), AGRIS ownership committee chair, presents a donation to Captain Stephen Holland (right), from the CK Salvation Army.