First of all I would like to thank those who have already stepped up to help us with our biggest fundraiser of the year, The Christmas Campaign. The Salvation Army nationally has come up with a slogan for these trying times, “Rescue Christmas,” and although we know Christmas doesn’t need rescuing, (God did that many years ago,) we are trying to rescue the financial devastation that this pandemic has put on The Salvation Army in the last year. Although we have been blessed here in Haines with the fraction of the cases that other communities have, we are definitely seeing the impact. Although we didn’t do Thanksgiving baskets last year we did assist 40 families with commodities to help them during the Thanksgiving season. Last week we distributed 240 Thanksgiving/commodity baskets to folks in need here in our little town, and we expect Christmas to be even larger. So as you can see the need has greatly increased, but unfortunately our fundraising campaign is going to be hit hard because of the social distance requirements of COVID-19. We are running an article on page for of this week’s paper that I hope you will read. It will help to explain our dilemma.
Capt. Kevin Woods, The Salvation Army