The Estevan Hamper Association's Angel Tree program was a huge success this year despite all possible challenges.
The organization was able to get enough gifts for about 560 kids ages zero through 16, thus making sure that all younger members of the Estevan community have something to unwrap on Christmas morning.
Just like everything else this year, the Angel Tree program went somewhat differently. Char Seeman, who is the co-chair of the association with Heather Woodhouse, said that there were a lot of monetary donations.
"The monetary donations were awesome, the actual toy donations were down. We did buy between 70 and 80 per cent of the toys with the monetary donations we got," Seeman said.
Volunteers said that shopping for toys was fun and a bit tricky, as getting gifts for about 400 children required a lot of imagination. When volunteers started running out of ideas they ended up asking friends about what their kids get or want for Christmas. But after all, they were very grateful for the support and donations of all types.
"Without monetary donations, we would be in huge trouble," said Seeman.
"It's a different year, so it's different for everything," added Shelley Dayman, who helps run the Angel Tree program every year.
The toy collection season opened up as early as November this year, and went all the way up to Dec. 12, thus allowing for the organizers to quarantine all the donations and set up the Toy Store at the basement of St. Giles Anglican Church.
Angel Trees were up at Walmart, Mr. Mikes Steakhouse Casual, and Your Toy Store and More. Seeman noted that this year unlike normal, the last two locations saw more donations than the first one.
"Mr. Mikes got an amazing amount of toys, so did Your Toy Store and More," Seeman said.
She added that the decrease in toy donations in Walmart was probably due to people, in general, trying to limit their shopping trips because of the pandemic.
Angel Tree volunteers shopped locally for everything they needed to fill the shelves at the association’s Toy Store.
"We really wanted to support the community that supports us," Seeman said.
This year was very different in a sense of demand as well. It marked a record for the Community Hamper Association. The highest they've ever been before was 312 hampers, and this year they had about 390 applications. And for kids, before they only needed to allocate about 400 gifts, and the number of applications this year was also well above what they've ever received before.
But the one thing that remained the same was the strong and confident community support. Be it businesses or private people, Estevan came together again and made sure that Angels Tree can fulfill the obligations they took upon themselves.
"Huge thank you to the community and everything that they have done. The oilfield companies especially, because they are all struggling, and they have come and supported us unbelievably. (We are also grateful to) all the businesses because everybody is struggling, but they all came together and helped us. And I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone for donating, because if they wouldn't have given us the money this year, there is no way we could have even been close to doing what we did," Seeman said.
All parents that applied to receive gifts for their children through Angels Tree were scheduled to come to St. Giles Church over the period of Dec. 15-17. Everybody had an appointed time, so parents could safely browse the options available, and then volunteers helped them with packing the gifts.
