OLDS — This year is the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Olds and District Christmas Angels, a group of volunteers who collect and deliver hampers filled with toys, food and gift cards to needy families in the community.
In 2018, volunteers delivered 197 hampers to local families.
In total, 604 individuals, 278 of whom were children, “enjoyed a much merrier Christmas, thanks to the generosity of the hundreds of people who volunteered or who provided much-needed donations to our program,” a speech to program directors said.
Organizers say this year looks like it will be another successful season for the group.
Volunteer coordinator Claire Rosehill says lots of volunteers have come forward to collect, sort and fill the hampers. However, they always welcome more volunteers to deliver those hampers.
Plans call for hampers to be delivered Dec. 20 starting at about 4 p.m. from the Ralph Klein Centre.
You’ll have an opportunity to donate gifts Dec. 14 when the Angels operate their annual Stuff The Bus event from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Canadian Tire parking lot.
One of the most popular aspects of the Christmas Angels program is the opportunity to learn what gifts are needed by checking out trees around town.
This is the third year that’s been done.
Tags indicating what gifts are needed are placed on trees throughout the community. People can look for them and buy gifts according to what’s needed.
On their Facebook page and on Instagram, the Christmas Angels denote where the trees with the tags are located.
“It’s really been successful,” Rosehill says. “A lot of people basically want to connect a little bit more to the giving, so we’ve always gotten lots of requests from people who specifically want to do a hamper for a family.
“But that’s hard because we don’t really like to give out much information because of confidentiality.
“So we kind of creatively came up with this idea of basically taking the requests, putting them on tags, and then the community can connect a little bit more to giving in that way.”
Rosehill is pleased with how successful that program has become.
“Basically any business that has a tree and that knows that we exist has asked us for tags. We get more and more requests,” she says.
“It’s nice, because I think the other thing that happens is companies will internally use their tree with their staff to kind of promote some giving back at Christmastime.
“So you know, it could be a customer coming in taking tags, or I think a lot of times it’s the staff themselves who take the tags and buy the gifts and make a little bit of a staff exercise out of it.”
At one time, volunteers actually used to provide cooked turkeys with all the trimmings in those hampers.
But that became pretty onerous and it was also recognized that not everyone in the community eats turkey at Christmas, so organizers began buying gift cards.
Some food such as cereals, granola bars and chocolates are also included to make sure the family has something to eat on Christmas Day.
