Though Squamish Community Christmas Care wound up getting the job it always does, done — bringing holiday hampers to those in need in town — that wasn’t always a forgone conclusion.
“If you had asked me in September, my eyes would have glazed over a bit and I would have had very few answers,” Squamish United Church’s Rev. Karen Millard, one of the organizers behind the initiative, told The Chief.
“As the Community Christmas Care team gathered at our first meeting in September we had a skeleton plan but no idea how it would really play out.”
In the end, volunteers were able to deliver hampers to 200 in-need families in Squamish and what is more, they raised $82,000, more than double the $40,000 the organization usually raises.
When Community Care began 40 years ago, no one likely thought the initiative would span generations, nevermind a global pandemic, Millard noted.
“As we launched the 40th year of Christmas Care we knew there would be more need than ever and we knew that somehow we were going to need to offer our service in a way that put us in less immediate contact with others,” Millard said.
One of the first and hardest decisions organizers made this year was to not accept perishable food items, as they typically would.
The number of volunteers it takes to sort, organize and manage those food items made it too big of a risk in COVID-19 times.
The upside of this decision was that long-lasting food items for the hampers could be gathered and organized much earlier.
Christmas Care usually has a core team of 15 and 100 casual volunteers throughout the year and about 100 more drivers.
This year there was the core 15, and 20 on the loading and delivery day, with about 50 people delivering.
The team put hampers together over the two weeks before delivery, which occurred on Dec. 17.
“These decisions were good and faithful and yet I know a lot of people feel volunteering for [Community Christmas Care] on those days of sorting and packing up the hampers is how they give back in this season and every time I turned away a person wanting to give out of the goodness of their heart my heart sank a little,” Millard said.
Locals did continue to give back to the cause though. In fact, more than ever.
The donations from the Battle of the Businesses contest, Squamish Community Foundation, other businesses, churches and individuals flowed in.
“In our final meeting before delivery day we had a problem: generous donations had flooded in that last week. We needed to give more abundantly. As we worried about what we could do with all we had been given, tears welled up in my eyes as I thought we never dreamt this would be the kind of problem we would have,” she said.
Volunteer Mary Carey set up the depot, which was in an undisclosed warehouse donated for the effort by Solterra Development Corp. With trucks and crews from Silverback Treeworks and Gusto Movers along with several other individuals, delivery day was smoother than usual, Millard said.
Organizers realized that Squamish Community Christmas Care had been given to more than other charities, which were hindered by pandemic restrictions in their fundraising.
“As a team, we decided it was time for Squamish Community Christmas Care to expand our reach to all the corridor and so we were able to give those groups double the donations they would have received had their events not been cancelled due to COVID-19,” she said.
The group gave some of their donations to Whistler, Pemberton and Lil’wat Christmas drives.
“Who knew that in a year when everything seems so hard we would have to opportunity to experience such gifts and love and light.”
