For more than 20 years during the holiday season, the Lac La Biche Firefighter's Society provides food for families in need and toys and gifts for their children. Through their Santa's Helpers program, they also provide gift baskets to seniors—who may be celebrating the season alone.
For their Santa's Helpers Program, society members wrapped gifts and prepared food hampers, and delivered them to homes of the less fortunate who had signed up for this year's program. They were able to provide food hampers for 100 families and gifts for more than 250 children this year.
In early December, the society members also delivered fruit baskets to approximately 80 residents of Lacalta Lodge and Points West Living.
Catherine Tran is the coordinator of the Santa's Helpers Program. She is grateful for all the efforts that community members — individuals and businesses — provided in the lead up to the holidays in order to help make the program successful.
This year's Santa's Helpers campaign raised approximately $25,000.
"Without the support from the community, we would not be able to run this program," Tran said," All the fundraising efforts in the community through the Radio-thon, Santa Comes to Town, and toy drive has helped our own residents."
Tran is glad that through the program, they were able to make a difference in many people's lives during this time of need. The society is striving to include more families on their list in the years to come.
"We see a real need for this program in our community. There were many more referral applications that came in this year, so unfortunately we were not able to fill them all. So knowing for next year, we can hopefully increase the number of hampers," said Tran.
