CREMONA - The Cremona Community Chest is once again set to help out a number of charities through door-to-door soliciting.
Cremona and area residents can expect to see volunteers at their doorstep in April asking for a donation of any size.
Dave Street is the chair for the group and he told the Gazette it's always a challenge to get enough canvassers.
"We usually start the beginning of April," said Street. "All our volunteers will go out and collect from people. It's always difficult to get enough canvassers and to cover the entire area. We have quite a large area with many remote locations. If we could get everyone that would be wonderful."
Street said they appreciate the volunteers but don't try to make them do too much. "We let them do what they normally do," he said. "We go from year to year. If there are new houses we get them later."
The canvassing wraps up the first week of May, said Street. After the money is collected it is divided equally between 19 different charities. In addition, Street said they also keep a pool of about $3,000 to help out with local families that may have suffered damage through fires. Last year the group collected more than $42,000 for the various charities.
"We have lots of happy charities," he said. "Some of the charities are not commonly known but have affected families in this area. You might see a charity you don't recognized such as the Canadian Hemochromatosis Society. It's located in Vancouver and is related to iron in the blood. It can cause death, which it did in our community.
"One of our residents' family member passed away from that and it wasn't diagnosed at the time. They're not that well known but they're always happy to receive any funding we can give them."
Street isn't exactly sure when the Cremona Community Chest started but he figures it was probably the late 1960s.
"Now we collect over $40,000," he said. "Each year we seem to do better than the previous. Back then it was probably just a few thousand dollars."
Street said the community is very generous and almost everyone is eager to help chip in.
