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Pigeon Lake Santa’s Elves celebrate 20 years of giving

Increase of seniors requesting support this year along with singles living alone
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Pigeon Lake Santa’s Elves just completed their 20th year of giving. This year over 1,000 gifts were wrapped and delivered with 92 food hampers to needy families in our region. On December 13th volunteers came and set up MaMeO Hall like a huge toy store with all of the toys categorized to children’s ages.

Then on the Saturday the community came out in abundance and started all of the wrapping for each of the 219 children. We had seniors with grandchildren, local members of the fire department, couples, members of our local 4H group, and others all come to wrap.

We were done in a record time this year and because of the commitment of our community volunteers the project was completed without any challenges. After the gifts were all wrapped, labeled and sorted for each individual family, then the hampers were set up for filling.

On the Sunday volunteers arrive and fill up the hampers with food for a healthy breakfast and the Christmas dinner. Then volunteers arrive for the deliveries of the gifts and hampers. We had an increase of seniors requesting support this year along with singles living alone. We cover a large region of our community from highway 2 to Winfield and then from highway 616 to highway 611.

This project was started 20 years ago and it could not happen without the strong support of our community. Along with the incredible volunteers we have, the project is totally funded by the community. Many businesses made cash donations, both of our local seniors groups, MaMeo Seniors and Mulhurst Bay Seniors, families and both of our local fire departments the Mulhurst Bay fire department and South Pigeon Lake fire department along with many other members of our community.

Many businesses also took donations and had donation boxes in their locations for us. A huge thanks also goes out to our local schools and churches who house our donation boxes for toys and also the cash donations they made. The Village market orders all of the food for our hampers and are very helpful with discounts and support.

The Village of Pigeon Lake put on a Christmas fundraiser for us which really was an incredible help. A big thank you goes out to Lana Nordlund who organizes Edmonton’s Santa’s Anonymous. They have donated some of their stuffed animals that were thrown at the Oiler’s annual Teddy Bear Toss the past couple of years. Another big thank you to Cst. Larry and Cst. James with the RCMP for keeping an eye on our project during the weekend.

Many families have made it a Christmas tradition volunteering and supporting Pigeon Lake Santa’s Elves.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you all, for making 2019 another successful year of giving.

-Submitted

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