Charities in Northwest Saskatchewan are preparing for the Christmas season, amidst the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. (File photo/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Josh Ryan

Charitable Challenges

Saskatchewan charities bracing for Christmas season

Nov 23, 2020 | 6:19 PM

Saskatchewan residents continue to adjust to COVID-19 related changes from the provincial government and as Christmas draws near, charities are trying to get ahead of potential roadblocks in delivering help to those who need it.

In the Battlefords, the District Food and Resource Centre has seen the number of people passing through the food bank drastically reduce with COVID-19 precautions, in order to ensure social distancing. Executive Director Erin Katerynych said it’s made preparing for the holiday rush much more difficult.

“We used to be able to predict how many people would come in and use the food bank in the morning,” she said. “All of that is out the window.”

A key adjustment Katerynych said they are working on is trying to make the process of going through donations faster. Because of precautions, only three people are in the food bank during the week.

“Because you have to wait outside until somebody leaves, for somebody else to come in,” Katerynych said. “Normally we’d have a packed room, but now you just can’t do that.”

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Because of the uncertainty, as well as the economic struggles of many families during the pandemic, the food bank has increased the number of Christmas hampers it’s preparing to 450. In order to manage the rush of delivering hampers, Katerynych said they’re encouraging people to get their hampers early and will no longer complete the process in one day.

“This year we’re staggering out over three days, so that we care able to get people to social distance and only allow a small amount of people to get in here at a time to pick up their hampers,” she said. “We’re taking all the precautions that we can to ensure people’s safety.”

Toys being down are an issue, last year handed over 770 gifts last year related to children’s toys. Monitoring the total thus far, Katerynych said it’s going to take a large reload.

“If we get another 775 children needing toys, then we’ll need a lot more than what we have now.”

Katerynych said she’s very grateful to all of the volunteers who’ve helped during this time.

“We wouldn’t be able to do this without their help,” she said.

Charities in Meadow Lake have also had to make hard adjustments. Natanis Bundschuh, executive director of Meadow Lake Outreach Ministries, said they have had to reduce services with the soup kitchen at the drop-in centre, where they are no longer allowing people to come in and sit for food since March.

“We’re just doing bagged lunches from 12-2 p.m., Monday through Friday,” she said.

The centre is waiting for some stability in the coming weeks and months before making larger changes. Bundschuh said they’ve looked at the possibility of reopening, but the increase of sanitization and masking is driving costs up.

“We would need to have probably double the staff that we have currently working, but we don’t have the money to pay them,” she said. “We just have to do what we can do [in the meantime].”

Bundschuh said they hope to eventually create a more stable foundation of regular donations that come in, which would allow them to expand the number of households they can support. Most of the donations they’ve relied on come from local businesses.

“As well as some donations that are being mailed in or dropped off,” she said “But we would really benefit from having the stability of a more solid foundation.”

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josh.ryan@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @JoshRyanSports