Holiday drive for needy kicks off
Nearly 10,000 poor families will again get the gift of a Christmas celebration this year, if the Inland Northwest community is as generous as it has been in the past. The Spokesman-Review launches its annual Christmas Fund charity today, with a goal of raising $485,000 to pay for the fixings of a holiday dinner and new toys for the poor.
Last year, the charity distributed food vouchers and toys to more than 31,000 people at the Christmas Bureau, which is the distribution process for the charity.
The charity depends entirely on generous donations from the community.
More than 15,000 toys already fill a local warehouse. That’s the number that bureau organizers anticipate will be needed to provide a new toy for every child whose family comes for help. The cost of the toys runs about $200,000, so the Christmas Fund already has bills to pay.
In addition, the Christmas Bureau distributes about $280,000 in food vouchers to about 10,000 families.
The bureau is open to all area people who come to the Spokane County Fair & Expo Center Ag Building between Dec. 8 and Dec. 21, and demonstrate they are needy. Proof of need includes state medical coupons or subsidized power and rent bills.
“This charity reaches out to the working poor, a group that is struggling to make ends meet,” says Carol Speltz, the volunteer director of the Christmas Bureau. “We know that a $40 food voucher won’t change the lives of a family, but they can go home with a really nice toy and will have a better holiday.”
Donors have given well over $10 million to the Christmas Fund since the newspaper’s efforts began in 1945 – more than $3 million of that in this decade alone.
The process is simple: Contributors can mail or bring donations to The Spokesman-Review offices. Donations can also be made online at www.spokesmanreview.com/ christmasfund via PayPal.
The newspaper partners with Catholic Charities and Volunteers of America in the operation of the Christmas Bureau. This year, the bureau will open 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m. every day except Sunday, Dec. 8-21. There will be no evening hours, as there have been the past several years. Bureau organizers decided Saturday hours might better serve both gift recipients and volunteers.
A committee of volunteers ordered the toys earlier this year through a local distributor. Last year, nearly 16,000 poor children received new toys, and their families were given a bag of candy and food vouchers that can be used at grocery stores to buy the fixings of a holiday dinner. The amount of the food voucher depends on the number of family members living in the household. The charity served more than 31,000 poor people last year.
The Christmas Fund pays for the charity. Last year, a generous community gave more than $518,000 to the fund as a Christmas gift to the poor.
Volunteers begin organizing the Christmas Bureau operation in November. For example, more than 20 women from the volunteer group Assistants spent an afternoon in early November assembling 2,000 gift bags.
About 2,000 recipients at the Christmas Bureau live alone. They will again be given a Christmas bag of goodies as well as a $15 food voucher. This is the second year that Assistants members worked behind the scenes of the Bureau.
“Assistants is a local fundraising and volunteer group that started about 40 years ago as the Spokane Symphony Association,” said Assistants member Barbara Cochran. “We hold a garage sale in May and a Christmas bake sale and give between $5,000 and $7,000 to local charities every year. We also volunteer our time.”
The gift bag goodies include a toothbrush or toothpaste, donated by dentist Katherine Hakes; a Spokesman-Review notepad and pen; a deck of cards from Northern Quest casino; and a piece of candy from Albertsons.
After the bags were sealed, the Christmas Bureau received a donation from McDonald’s restaurants of 2,000 gift cards for a sandwich and soft drink. The donation value is about $8,600. The McDonald’s gift cards, good at any of the 21 area McDonald’s, will be stapled to the gift bags for single recipients.