Community steps up during pandemic to support Salvation Army Christmas campaign

The concerns over COVID-19 infection meant that some regular kettle volunteers were not comfortable doing a shift during the 2020 campaign.

“We absolutely understood that and we didn't want to pressure anyone into doing something that they were not comfortable with,” she emphasized. “We were still able to meet almost all of our kettle shifts. We had people who haven't volunteered before, and people who have volunteered before taking on more hours.”

Hutterite colonies in southwest Saskatchewan have for many years been strong supporters of the Swift Current food bank, and it was also the case during the 2020 Christmas campaign. The Salvation Army could not host the annual Hutterite appreciation luncheon due to the pandemic restrictions, but still acknowledged the contribution of the colonies towards the campaign.

“There was a specific day that was chosen for the Hutterites to come and drop off their donations, and then as they did that, we had created little packages for them with a thank you note and some other little items in it as our way of saying thank you for what they have done throughout the year,” she said.

Several changes were implemented during the 2020 Christmas campaign, for example there were no in-person applications for Christmas hampers.

“We think and the feedback has been that it went really well.” Lieut. Mailman said. “We were able to offer delivery as well as have people pick up their hampers this year in an effort to space things out, and that seemed to go really well.”

A significant change was the procedures followed by the food bank during the Christmas campaign. In previous years the food bank closed and people received a very large food hamper. For 2020 the food bank remained open for regular food distribution and the Christmas hamper was smaller.

“We think that worked much better,” she said. “We're not seeing the same kind of backlog for appointments that we had in the past after Christmas, because we've been able to meet people's needs for food up until just the week before Christmas. So as far as we can tell right now, it went well. We only have this one year to go by, so it's hard to say for sure, but most people were really receptive.”

These changes will be reviewed before any decisions are taken about whether it will remain in place in the future.

“Our plan is to debrief with our staff to see what our clients thought and get an idea of what worked well, what didn't work well, and what kind of changes we want to see in the future,” she said. “And then of course we have absolutely no idea what's coming December 2021. As far as we can tell now, there are changes we would like to keep, but this December we might not have the same restrictions. So things might look a little bit different this December.”