MINDEMOYA—A room filled with volunteers, operating as a well-oiled machine; Santa’s helpers have been busy at the Freshwater Community Church these last few weeks. The church in Mindemoya graciously allows Manitoulin Family Resources (MFR) to move in, set up and slowly work their magic of providing Christmas hampers to hundreds on the Island. One large room is like a warehouse, filled with food and volunteers putting boxes together and filling them up.
“Right now we’re sitting at 740, last year was 1,050, but we were also looking after Wiikwemkoong. This year their food bank is taking on their clients, otherwise we’d be around 1100 to 1200,” Vanessa Glasby said. Ms. Glasby is the Food Security Program Supervisor at MFR. “It’s still a busy year. It’s a little bit lighter than usual because we’re down one community, but we’ll probably have up to 800 clients before the end of the week,” she said. Most of the clients are referrals from various organizations and the organizations come and pick up, and distribute the Christmas baskets to their own clients. Some are self referrals and those are the numbers that fluctuate and are difficult to predict.
The Christmas hamper project is intense, and it begins early in the fall. Letters are sent out to main contributors asking for monetary donations. Food is purchased in bulk from Valu-Mart and Foodland, and then there are the food donations from the various food drives: stuff a cruiser and the Expositor donations, among many others that take place in the fall and early winter months. The end result is this impressive warehouse of groceries. “We did about four transports full of food this year,” Vanessa says, proudly. “We started bringing stuff into the church on December 9th. And the church has been very generous to allow us the space…because we can’t do this at the food bank, we just don’t have the room,” she said.
The whole sanctuary of the church is the toy department, where the volunteers wrap the toys for the kids, and get them sorted. The toys are donated, either through the telethon in Sudbury or from individuals and every child gets at least one toy, or more if there are enough. Everyone gets a hat, or some gloves from the knitwear collection of donated items.
The sanctuary of the Freshwater Community Church does indeed appear to be Santa’s workshop, with wrapped gifts sorted by age and gender in the pews, row upon row. For Sunday service, the toys are moved to the back of the church and the table set up in the front, for the wrapping of gifts, is also cleared away. A lot of work added to an already heavy schedule, but no one seems to mind. There’s a dedicated group of volunteers who have been doing this for decades and they take it all in stride.
“I’ve done this for years,” said one volunteer, “but this is my first time helping here. It just feels good to be a part of this.”
For those wishing to volunteer to help with the wrapping, the sorting and the filling of boxes, the ideal time to contact Manitoulin Family Resources is in November. This is when lists of volunteers are made; hours available to work are noted and schedules are compiled. It’s an intricate and thoroughly organized schedule. “Usually it’s Monday to Friday. We don’t do weekends and we don’t do evenings, so it’s a little tricky for those who work fulltime,” Ms. Glasby said.
by Margery Frisch
