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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

‘COVID doesn’t ruin Christmas’: Pandemic forces changes to Christmas Bureau volunteering

By Nina Culver The Spokesman-Review

This year, the Christmas Bureau will no longer hum along like a well-oiled machine powered by decades of experience in handing out food vouchers to families in need, as well as a toy and a book for each child. This year, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced a switch to a virtual event, requiring organizers to nearly start from scratch.

The Christmas Bureau is a joint venture by Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington, the Volunteers of America and The Spokesman-Review. Every year, the community donates money collected by the newspaper and distributed to the two charities to pay for everything recipients get.

Christmas Bureau volunteer coordinator Brigid Krause said she’s had to completely redo everything.

“We basically have all new job descriptions,” she said. “Out at the Christmas Bureau, all the jobs are physical. None of them involve sitting down.”

Instead of recipients coming to the Spokane County Fairgrounds to receive their food voucher and select toys for their children, they will come to the fairgrounds to pick up prepackaged gifts for which they’ve applied and selected online.

“We can’t just default to the way we’ve been doing,” Krause said.

Plans also had to be made to accommodate the pandemic in other ways. Each volunteer will have their temperature taken when they come in. Volunteers will wear masks, and plenty of hand sanitizer will be available. The number of volunteers in the building at once has been limited, and volunteers will not be served lunch. Krause said she had to prepare a detailed floor plan of where each volunteer would work and submit it to the Spokane County Regional Health District for approval.

“When all this happened, we realized that 90% of our volunteers are over 65,” she said. “We have to keep them safe and keep our clients safe.”

Another significant change is that volunteers will be working shorter shifts. Part of that is so they won’t need lunch, but the other reason is the physical nature of the work, a lot of which will be outside in the cold, Krause said.

Over the summer, all volunteers were sent a survey asking if they wished to volunteer this year or wait and come back in 2021, when hopefully the Christmas Bureau will be back to normal. Some chose to wait until next year.

“We lost about 30% to 40% of our volunteers,” Krause said. “It’s just humbling, the people that are staying on. They think it’s important that COVID doesn’t ruin Christmas.”

Usually the Christmas Bureau opens to the public for 11 days. But this year, volunteers will be needed for four weeks, during which they’ll inventory toys, gather them into prepared packages for families and distribute them from a drive-thru.

Krause said she’s doing her best to schedule the volunteers as needed, but things are still being finalized.

“We’re just not going to know what we need until we go through it,” she said. “It’s all a guessing game.”

The deadline for recipients to apply for the food vouchers and gifts is Nov. 6. The nearly 8,000 households who applied for assistance in 2019 have been sent a postcard alerting them to the new procedures this year, and those who provided an email address have also been sent an email.

People can apply by visiting cceasternwa.org/christmas-bureau. Those who do not have access to the internet can call Catholic Charities at (509) 358-4250 to get assistance filling out the application over the phone.

Applicants will not be required to provide proof of income, but must provide proof of residency and the number of children in the home. A service provider verification form, which allows a school or day care to verify the children in the home, is also available online. Families who applied in 2019 will not be asked to reverify their information unless something has changed.

Parents will be asked to look through an online toy catalogue and select their top three choices for each child. Efforts will be made to select one of the three or something similar. Recipients will be asked to select a day and time that works best for them to pick up gifts.

Food vouchers, which are also available to single adults, will be mailed to recipients the week of Nov. 16. Families with children will also receive a letter giving them a date and time to pick up their toys and books.