The Christmas Angels in Olds and district have come up with a new way to obtain toys for needy families in the community – Stuff The Bus.
The Sunshine Bus will be parked in the Olds Canadian Tire parking lot Saturday, Dec. 13. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. that day, volunteers from the Rotary Club of Olds will be helping Christmas Angels stuff it with donated Christmas toys.
Later, the toys will be sorted according to age and gender, then distributed in time for Christmas. The goal is – as much as possible -- to provide needy children with the toys they asked for.
If money is donated instead of toys, it will be used to buy gift cards for food.
Stuff The Bus replaces the Charity Check Stop. Organizers say it proved to be too controversial.
Stuff The Bus chair Heather De Boer stresses the Christmas Angels program is different from the food bank's drive to obtain food hampers.
“This will just be toys,” she says. “When they started the Christmas Angels program in 1998, they did give out food hampers, because we have a lot of food given to us and then the food bank also handed out food hampers. So they got together and said, ‘well, you know, this is a duplication.'
“So any food that we have collected in our barrels or that is given to us, we turn over to the food bank, because they do their own Christmas hamper program with just food.
“We focus on children. That's our main intent, to make sure that children receive gifts for Christmas,” De Boer adds.
De Boer says there's good reason monetary donations go toward gift cards for food.
“We decided to go that route because (we have residents with) so many ethnic backgrounds,” she says.
“We didn't want to give them a turkey voucher if they didn't eat poultry. It became a concern that maybe a turkey voucher wasn't being used, or they would like something different. So we just organized gift cards for the different stores in town and we do give an envelope with gift cards as well as a box of presents for the children.”
Great care is taken to make sure no one knows who gets the gifts and food gift cards, De Boer says.
“Somebody will nominate a family and one person in our organization is privy to those names and numbers and they arrange it with the family. When they pack the gift boxes the volunteers only know a number; they never know a name.
“We pack the boxes based on what the children want. So when we get initial contact with them, we'll ask them the ages of the children, whether they're male or female, and what do they want for Christmas.
“If we have it within our power we will try to get them what's on their Christmas list -- so if they want Legos, we'll get 'em Legos – that sort of thing.”
Mary Jane Harper of the Christmas Angels came up with the Stuff The Bus idea and booked the Sunshine Bus for the occasion.
The Sunshine Bus is a wheelchair-accessible bus that is owned and operated by the Town of Olds. It provides transportation for seniors and disabled people of any age, enabling them to go to and from appointments or for other things like shopping trips.
Harper says there's no problem stuffing the bus next Saturday because it doesn't operate on weekends.
In fact, she says, “one of the regular Sunshine Bus drivers has volunteered his services to drive the bus to the parking lot location and return it to the town office.”
