Thanks to Kincardine community for generous donations to hamper program

The Kincardine Community Services Christmas Hamper program helped more than 500 people this year, and its thanks to the generosity of the community and the help of the devoted volunteers.

That’s the word from co-ordinator Heather Finnie.

“All I can say is WOW,” said Finnie, after the dust had settled and the Gift Card Hampers had been distributed Friday, Dec. 4.

“The community was so generous when we announced that we were switching to a ‘gift-card only' model for our hampers this year, due to the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic. Donations came in from organizations, businesses and individuals. It gave us the ability to give a generous envelope of gift cards to each of the recipients. We send a huge thank you to you all.”

This year, the volunteers assembled 220 hamper envelopes and distributed them to 112 families, 15 couples and 93 individuals. This represents a total of 515 people.

“Our numbers were up significantly from 2019 when we packed 164 Hampers,” said Finnie.

“We really missed the Kincardine District Senior School (KDSS) Christmas Knights this year and we hope and pray that they are able to work with us again in 2021. All being well, we will be doing our collection the first Saturday of December next year.”

She said a much smaller group of volunteers worked on the assembly of the Christmas hamper envelopes.

“Thank you to all who helped at the donation desk for 15 days, the people who helped with the math involved, the inputting of information into spread sheets, and generally, in figuring out how to distribute the gift cards.

"A special thank you to Eleanor Roppel for her many hours of phone calls to make sure that we distributed the Gift Card Hampers in a safe and timely way.

"You can be assured that the community’s generous spirit made a Merry Christmas for many folks in Kincardine.”