REGINA - This week marked the finale for this year’s Share the Warmth Days, as they held their last event of the year at Cornwall Centre.
Volunteers including SaskEnergy employees were on hand to hand out 300 bags of essential items to people in need. Those included scarves, toques, mitts, toothbrushes, some snacks, and other things to keep people warm. They also handed out plenty of Tim Hortons coffee.
This is the sixth and final community Share the Warmth Day that SaskEnergy has hosted this year in various Saskatchewan communities. The other events were in Saskatoon, Swift Current, Weyburn, Yorkton and Prince Albert.
With this final event in Regina, it brings the total to over 1000 bags of essential items distributed to those in need throughout the province this winter season. The program has also provided grants to worthy community organizations throughout Saskatchewan with 100 communities benefiting.
Allix Schweitzer, Supervisor of Community Engagement for SaskEnergy, said they are proud of this program which has gone on now for three decades.
“For 30 years we’ve been Sharing the Warmth with communities throughout Saskatchewan,” said Schweitzer. “This year we gave away $100,000 to charitable community organizations who are doing just that.”
She said that to qualify, those organizations needed to work to provide items or programs and services related to warm food, clothing, or shelter. Mental health organizations qualify as well.
“There’s a lot of organizations or groups that do that and we gave away 106 grants this year,” said Schweitzer.
One of the organizations receiving the grant was The Circle Project, a Regina non-profit whose work was showcased at the event in Regina Thursday.
Haley Runns, Operations Manager at The Circle Project, said the grant support from Share the Warmth allowed them to “provide warm winter gear to folks that drop in into our drop in centre through our lunch program and our community hub.”
Runns said being awarded grant “allows us to make sure our space stays safe and inclusive. We’re able to provide warm winter gear to the folks that are vulnerable who come in to see us. We work with individuals who are experiencing homelessness or who are sometimes sleeping rough, so it’s good to have those winter gear on hand for them.”
But it’s also for the kids, she said. Runns said providing these items is the “least we can do” to “keep our community warm.”
