As of Friday, December 18th, $434,028.86 has been raised for the Grande Prairie Salvation Army Food Bank.
The Salvation Army’s Captain Peter Kim says he is optimistic about reaching the half-a-million mark to be able to fund Salvation Army operations throughout 2021.
“We’re really excited that we still have until the end of the year to reach that goal and we’re almost there.”
“We’re really grateful for the community to step up and really help us out,” he says.
Kim jokes that as the campaign rears every year, he stresses about its success, though adds the Grande Prairie community never seems to miss an opportunity to lend a helping hand.
“I’m getting used to, every year, stressing out beforehand but I always… have faith that people will give when the time comes and the neep is great.”
The Salvation Army decided to pull all their volunteers from their in-person Christmas Kettles earlier this month, as COVID-19 case counts increased, and harsher provincial restrictions were re-introduced. Despite this, however, Grande Prairie is still finding ways to support the campaign and give through the holidays.
“We got up to about $100,000-plus for our kettles, which, in last year we did about $300,000 in kettles so we were worried we weren’t going to make it because we don’t have our kettles out there,” says Kim.
Any donations received by the food bank before December 31st will be issued a charitable tax receipt for 2020. The goal is still to reach $500,000 before Christmas, though the campaign will run until the end of the year.