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Safe Harbour gets a Christmas hand up

The Safe Harbour Society was overwhelmed by the generosity of Red Deer residents this holiday season.

The Safe Harbour Society was overwhelmed by the generosity of Red Deer residents this holiday season.

Colleen Markus, the director of emergency services with the Safe Harbour Society, said community members dropped off items to them up until 2 p.m. on Christmas Eve. As a result over Christmas, the 60 individuals in the shelters that the Safe Harbour Society oversees had special packages to make their holidays brighter.

Markus said there was everything from handwarmers, nail clippers and Chapstick to Tim Hortons cards, phone cards and gloves dropped off. She said socks and candy were also included in the packages. She said substantially more items were dropped off this year compared to last year.

“What I was impressed with this year was the amount of donations that we received in the month previous to Christmas that really made it wonderful. We were able to give bags for each person in detox and all of our shelters,” Markus said.

The Safe Harbour Society oversees the Winter’s Inn, People’s Place and the mat program.

While many of the needs were met at Christmas time, the society is constantly in need of bus tickets, gloves and warm boots during the winter.

Markus said monetary donations are also always useful for needs that can come out of the blue for things like bus tickets home to Edmonton, Calgary or out of province or to help pay for prescriptions.

“There are little things like that that we don’t think about and then who is going to pay for that?” Markus said. “So we’re always so thrilled to have a little pot (of money).”

sobrien@www.reddeeradvocate.com