Tons of toys, oodles of food and tens of thousands in cash were collected in what has become the biggest weekend of the year for charitable giving in Red Deer.
The three-day Stuff-A-Bus campaign, the RCMP’s Charity CheckStop and Westerner Park’s Christmas Bazaar all fall on the same weekend every year, right at the beginning of December, says Fred Scaife, executive director of the Red Deer Food Bank. The food bank, Christmas Bureau, Salvation Army, Ronald McDonald House and a number of other charities all shared in the generosity of donors during what Scaife described on Monday as the kickoff to the Christmas season.
Of all of those groups, the food bank is the one that benefits from all three events, said Scaife.
“Stuff-A-Bus makes me, more than any other time of year, realize what the real genuine magic of giving can do for a community. We become a better community after this.”
Scaife said he was approached at the Stuff-A-Bus collection point in Parkland Mall by one woman with a $20 bill and a colouring book. She had given cash and gifts at the Charity CheckStop and Christmas Bazaar as well.
“She said, ‘There, now my day’s complete,’ ” said Scaife.
Cpl. Kathe DeHeer, media liaison for the Red Deer City RCMP, said people who might normally try to avoid a CheckStop were pulling in with their gifts before Saturday morning’s event could even be set up. Vehicles were still stopping after 4:30 p.m. when police officers and other groups were trying to break it down.
“We couldn’t get out of there because they wouldn’t stop stopping. That was pretty funny. Perhaps next year we’re going to have to start at 10.”
While she hadn’t finished counting the cash by noon on Monday, DeHeer estimated the total at just over $24,000, compared with $22,000 in 2008.
The food bank van was filled to the top and the Christmas Bureau’s covered pickup truck also went away stuffed to the top with toys, she said.
The Charity CheckStop, held on Taylor Drive, just north of 32nd Street, also collected toques and gloves for local groups involved with homelessness.
DeHeer said she is still working out a formula to distribute the cash. Safe Communities and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, whose volunteers helped out at the CheckStop, will get a portion, she said. She also plans to provide some cash to other groups, including the Central Alberta Women’s Emergency Shelter and the Central Alberta Women’s Outreach, and is making arrangements to offer a share to the hot lunch program now operating in Red Deer schools.
Scaife, whose organization works with Zed-99 and KG Country Radio on the Stuff-A-Bus campaign, said people brought in enough goods to stuff two buses. He estimated that the event, held Thursday through Saturday, pulled in between $40,000 and $42,000 in cash and about $10,000 worth of groceries, which is roughly on par with last year’s event.
The Christmas Bureau has no way to estimate the value of the toys it received through the campaign, he said.
While he does not have a final tally on the food donations collected at the Christmas Bazaar, Scaife said this year’s version — held over two days — appears to have netted even more groceries than the Stuff-A-Bus.
There is no admission fee to the event, but people were asked to bring a food or cash donation with the cash going toward the Ronald McDonald House, now under construction near the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre.
Event co-ordinator Alana Morgotch said she does not yet have any totals.
Along with cash for the Ronald McDonald House and food for the Food Bank, the Christmas Bazaar offered the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation some space for a Christmas cottage, where it was able to raise cash through sales of pictures with Santa.
bkossowan@www.reddeeradvocate.com