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Photo Credit: EverythingGP
By Shane Clausing
record breaking year

Grande Prairie Salvation Army raises over $750,000 during Christmas fundraising campaign

Jan 13, 2021 | 5:00 AM

The Grande Prairie Salvation Army’s Christmas Fundraising Campaign raised a record total of $761,566.20 this year, well above the initial goal of $500,000.

The money will go towards helping the Salvation Army function over the course of 2021 and helping those in need.

Peter Kim with the Grande Prairie Salvation Army says he’s grateful for the community’s generosity.

“When the going was tough, people stepped up. I know especially a lot of the corporate donors gave us huge amounts that put us really over the top. I want to thank oil companies, logging companies and all the companies in Grande Prairie and the surrounding area for their donations.”

Kim says they also saw a lot of money collected directly from the public.

“We saw an increase in donations from our mailers. We raised $524,000 on the mailers alone. We were short on our kettles this year, but we also saw an increase in our online donations for a total of $98,855 and that’s the most we’ve ever had online.”

With all of the money raised from the holidays going back to help the Salvation Army operate for the year, Kim says that they will be able to help a lot of people.

“In 2020 we gave out close to 60 tonnes of food, which was 3,975 hampers and that equates to 6,588 people served.

“This year we saw 1,361 new families accessing the food bank. We can see that the need is increasing. We also use those funds to help with our community kitchen, where we helped serve over 20,000 meals in 2020.”

Kim tells EverythingGP he expects the Salvation Army to stay busy as the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

“Thank you to all the donors who gave,” said Kim. “Whether they gave $5 or $57,000, everything counted and is really going to stay local and help our community.”

by Shane Clausing