Cheer struggles

Volunteers with the local Christmas Cheer campaign have been using their own money in an attempt to offset this year’s lackluster donations, said a spokeswoman for the charitable organization.

The Thunder Bay Christmas Cheer fund started to wrap up its holiday campaign at the CLE Coliseum on Tuesday. The charity didn’t raise as much food as organizers had hoped, which has been made worse by an increased demand for the annual hampers.

Christmas Cheer campaign chairwoman, Linda Gambee, said they rely heavily on food donated from area schools, but some of those schools did not donate food this year.

She said the campaign at one time needed to put together 5,000 hampers, but this year the organization has been faced with more than 7,000 families requesting food hampers. Most of the families have children and the parents are often faced with the choice of getting their child a toy or food, she said.

"It’s been very disappointing this year," Gambee said. "Food donations are down, donations from the community are down about 50 per cent as of Tuesday. We had to go out last night and purchase 10,000 more items of food through our whole seller so that we would have enough to put into our hampers.

“We want to at least have one of the same items in the hamper."

While it appeared donations might pick up, she said it wouldn’t be enough to meet the intended goal for food items. She said they were short 2,500 items for their hampers.

The charity raised its targeted goal to $165,000, which is up from the $120,000 it collected previous year. Gambee said they wanted to set a goal this year that reflected the actual costs.

"This community has got that heart that comes through for us in the end," she said. "I think we will make it in terms of our financial donations, but not in terms of our food donations. Our financial donations are still down about $90,000 but it is picking up today.

"It’s a pretty hefty goal."

She said they would take financial donations into the new year.

Tabatha McKenzie, 39, said the charity helped her provide a turkey dinner for her 12-year-old son, Duchane. McKenzie, who went on a disability pension two years ago, said the help from Christmas Cheer meant she could make her son’s holiday even better.

She said she felt badly that Christmas Cheer was struggling and made a donation herself to try to help.

"I feel good getting it and I want to help when I can," McKenzie said. "If I could do more I would. I wish more people in the community would give more because I know people do have to give."