By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
Now in its 54th year, the Christmas Hamper Campaign has never been more important nor as well supported as it was this year.
From providing all-important food hampers to only ten families at its beginning half a century ago, this year’s campaign will see hampers going out to 250 families and individuals in need.
A reflection of the rising cost of groceries and the widespread struggle many Canadians face making ends meet, this number is the highest ever and up considerably from the 226 families and individuals helped last year.
But while the need within the community was up sharply so too was the generosity of this very same community, according to organizers.
The Knights of Columbus work with the Oliver Food Bank and the Oliver Missions Society to identify, register and facilitate the distribution of the hampers.
Students from Tuc-el-Nuit Elementary School also ran a Christmas Hamper Campaign.
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Tuc-el-Nuit students loading up the truck.
Food collection boxes are placed in businesses around town for donations of non-perishable food to be dropped off. And this year, a team was handing out Tummy Bags at No Frills in November to make it even easier to donate.
“The Tummy Bags really helped us, the monetary donations were down a bit and of course the mail strike hurt us in terms of those donations,” said Wayne Danbrook Knights of Columbus co-chair of the hamper campaign
The Tummy Bags were a “new” strategy this year, having been dormant for a number of years.
For two days over a weekend volunteers were stationed at the entrance to No Frills supermarket handing out the empty paper Tummy Bags which customers would then fill with non-perishable groceries and return to the volunteers.
Volunteers work to pack the hampers in the Catholic Church basement.
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Volunteers take a break from packing hampers for a group photo.
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Danbrook also highlighted the generosity of not just individual Oliverians but corporate sponsors as well.
The community-driven campaign also involves local schools – Oliver Elementary School and Tuc–el–Nuit Elementary School – who hold their own hamper food drives and learn about the importance of helping others.
“It’s a really special event,” says Shannon Miller, Principal at Tuc–el–Nuit Elementary School. “We do it, of course, for these guys,” she says in reference to the Knights of Columbus’ Christmas Hamper co-chairs Wayne Danbrook and Gary Mythen, but it’s also woven into a competitive team event at the school.
“But also we always remind them that they’re giving to people that really need it,” she adds noting it was “really successful this year,” with almost 400 items donated.
The whole school gets involved, helping with collecting and counting the food and of course, loading the trucks with boxes of food at the end of it, a popular activity judging from the excitement.
Two classes at Oliver Elementary School also participate – Suman Sharma’s Grade 7 class and Narinder Basanti’s Grade 4 class.
“Every year we do this Knights of Columbus food drive to help out and this year we collected 890 food items,” Sharma said.
“The students understand the importance of the subject and we do talk about how it’s a time of giving and the importance of helping each other,” she added.
Oliver Elementary students loading the collected food items into the trucks.
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Dale Dodge, also one of the key organizers from the Knights of Columbus said donations typically come in November and December, but prior to that volunteers are busy as far back as June buying food that’s on sale.
“We look at all the flyers and try to find the best deal, the best bang for the buck,” Dodge says. And he notes that despite the rising cost of groceries, they’ve managed to keep costs steady because they are such keen “flyer shoppers”.
The Knights of Columbus has a special account just for the hampers, which is where all the monetary donations go to be used to buy food. Typically they spend about $12,000 to $15,000 each year.
In a normal year since COVID 90 per cent of the good has been bought. This year the number was more like 75 per cent bought and 25 per cent was donated, largely through the Tummy Bags. “It was quite remarkable how much food came from the Tummy Bags,” he says.
“The Tummy Bags are wonderful because you fill up a bag for $20 and bingo all of a sudden you’ve got $5,000 worth of groceries. It doesn’t take long,” he says.
The process of making up the food hampers rolls out with near military precision. On Monday this week at the Christ the King Catholic Church in Oliver, the food was moved out from storage and onto tables according to categories. Each item in each category is then counted and from that, they know how many of each item can go into each hamper.
Half a dozen rows of tables snake around the entire activity centre in the basement of the church with every square centimetre covered with food items. Volunteers then take a hamper box(es) – which could be for an individual or family which changes the type and amount of food items it will contain – and move from one station to the next collecting items.
The total of 250 hampers works out roughly to 330 boxes because families are typically more than one box.
When Times Chronicle visited on Tuesday the activity centre was a beehive of activity with the hamper production line in full operation.
Once filled the hampers are stacked up on opposite sides of the room with one large chunk waiting for Oliver Missions Society’s Jo Tanner to deliver and the other side for pick up by individuals and families. Dodge laughs that one benefit of COVID-19 is the pickup system now in place.
Pre-COVID-19 people would come to pick up their hampers, stop for coffee and some chit chat. Now people give their registration number to a team at the entrance to the church parking lot which is then radioed down to the hall where their hamper is identified and brought out to the parking lot. “It’s much more efficient,” Dodge says.
Two Tuc-el-Nuit students handle a hefty load.
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Each box weighs on average 13.6 kg (30 lbs) and with 330 boxes that amounts to 4,488 kg or nearly five metric tons of food. Dodge again highlighted the generosity of the community saying, “We’ve had more food this year than ever because of the generosity of this community, its remarkable, just remarkable.”
Dodge also points to the important contribution of Ann Farnham who each year for the past five years has organized the Christmas Hamper Silent Auction which raised the most ever at $2,410.
He also notes that the small army of volunteers comes from across the community, not just the Knights of Columbus. “Many are members but it’s a real community effort,” he said.
Farnham says she got involved after moving from North Vancouver to Oliver half a dozen years ago. She says it’s important that when you come into a small community to volunteer and get involved.
