THUNDER BAY - A newly formed community action group is making local homes a little more festive this season, with the hopes that area children will experience their own special winter getaway.
Volunteers with the Vale/Limbrick Community Action Group are busy making Christmas wreaths to raise money for upcoming programing in January, including a possible trip for neighbourhood kids to Loch Lomond.
“It was one of the board members ideas,” said president of the Vale/Limbrick Community Action Group, Amy Manning. “She thought it would be good, something like that, since a lot of kids here don’t have the opportunity to do that.”
Volunteers have been gathering at the Resource Centre at Limbrick to help make the wreaths and several other families have been working on them at home.
“We’re going to make as much as we can,” Manning said. “If we get them sold and then get more orders, we will make more. As many as we can.”
The wreaths can still be ordered on Friday and for people living in the Northwood area, a special treat will come with the delivery.
“We are hoping to deliver them on Saturday,” Manning said. “For the people who live in the Northwood area that are close to Limbrick, we are going to deliver it to them and go caroling to their house with a group of kids.”
The wreath sale is one of the first initiatives of the Vale/Limbrick Community Action Group, which was formed in October. Manning said she wanted to model the program to a similar one she completed with her friend, Otis Perkins, who was killed in Aug. 2016.
“The reason why we formed it was to start doing positive programs in Limbrick,” Manning explained. “My friend, Otis Perkins, we ran a program together, the New Experience Program, and we talked about how it would be good to have programs here for the youth. I told him I would start them and he said he was going to support me.”
“After he passed away, we got really dedicated to making this work,” Manning continued. “We started working every day on establishing programs here.”
Manning said she really wants to provide youth in the area with positive programs, activities, and lessons. So far, there has been a lot of positive feedback from the community, but more help is still needed.
“It seems like it’s been really slow getting formed,” she said. “We started out with only a few people actually. There was just a handful of us. Now we have more people and it seems like people are slowly wanting to help. We do need more board members and we do need more help.”
Manning said more programming will be available in the New Year, as well as an indoor yard and craft sale fundraiser on Jan. 28 at the Vale Community Centre.
Wreaths can be ordered on the Vale/Limbrick Community Action Group Facebook page.
