St. Albert volunteers are busy packing hampers this week to help families in need serve Christmas dinner.
City residents helped pack 10 buses full of food and toys Dec. 7 in support of the 2024 Kinette Club of St. Albert’s Christmas Hamper Campaign. Now in its 57th year, this charitable event provides hundreds of St. Albert-area families with food and toys to celebrate Christmas.
St. Albert Kinette Club president Chelsey Mandrusiak thanked city residents for their generosity during last weekend’s Fill-a-Bus event.
“Our community truly came out,” she said.
Mandrusiak said the hamper campaign was a multi-generational tradition in her family going back to her grandmother, who was one of its first participants. She herself got into it after helping her mother deliver hampers and seeing the effects they had on their recipients.
“It’s so heartwarming.”
Mandrusiak said about 120 volunteers, many from sports teams and Scouts troops, will work furiously this week to sort and deliver the piles of donated goods that now fill the Kinsmen Club building in Riel Park. The Kinettes expect to deliver some 300 hampers this Dec. 14, each consisting of one-to-four boxes of food and toys.
“Everyone should have Christmas dinner and at least a toy,” she said.
Mandrusiak encouraged people to visit stalbertkin.ca/christmas-hamper-campaign to learn how to donate to or volunteer for this year’s campaign. Donations are due Dec. 12. Hampers can be requested via stalbertkin.ca/requesting-a-hamper.
Great need
The St. Albert Food Bank is gearing up for a similar Christmas dinner effort later this month.
“We’re making preparations for almost 1,000 hampers going out in the month of December,” said executive director Suzan Krecsy — 500 regular ones and 500 for Christmas, compared to about 800 in December 2023.
“Every month, we’re setting another record.”
Krecsy said this jump was the result of wages not keeping up with food prices, which are poised to rise three to five per cent next year, according to Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab. The Food Bank urged companies to adopt the living wage standard to address this issue.
Krecsy said the food bank shipped out some 78,000 pounds of food in November alone, which was 8,000 more than they got during last September’s fall food drive. (The food drive was supposed to bring in enough food to last several months.) So far, the food bank has been getting enough donations to stay afloat. She predicted demand would jump again after Christmas because of holiday expenses and January rent hikes.
Krecsy said the Food Bank’s Christmas hampers typically contain ham, a whole turkey, and other fresh ingredients — enough to cover Christmas dinner and the week after. It will take volunteers about two days to assemble them all. Unlike the Kinettes hampers, these ones will be picked up in person by their recipients at the Food Bank on Dec. 20.
The Kinettes hampers come with a referral to the St. Albert Salvation Army toy store. Located at 165 Liberton Dr., this pop-up store has been open since late November, and gives youths a chance to take home a donated toy.
About 1,000 youths took home toys from the store last year, and there will probably be even more this year, said Bhreagh Rowe, community ministries officer for the St. Albert Salvation Army. She asked residents to drop gift cards and toys (especially ones for older youths) for the store into donation boxes across St. Albert.
About 300 Salvation Army volunteers have also been out with their bells and kettles since Nov. 12 as part of the group’s annual kettle campaign, which funds youth programs and emergency relief in St. Albert. Rowe encouraged residents to chip in, as donations to the group thus far are about $20,000 below where they were last year, likely because the Canada Post strike has stopped mail-in donations.
Questions on the toy store and kettle campaign should go to 780-458-1937.
