2016 Christmas Angels Review

The Hants County Christmas Angels is thrilled to announce that our 2016 season was a smash success. Once we tallied all our numbers this year, we were able to raise $38,688! This included our 2016 Annual Telethon on December 4 which raised nearly $38,000!

With your help, we supported:

Families helped in 2016 – 220

Children helped in 2016 – 450

Included in those totals, we had 19 Wishbook families this year, nearly double our number from last year, which included several new business sponsors who provided families with a full Christmas experience.

Our Tree of Hope Supporters

Our Tree of Hope gift tag program was a great success, with local businesses hosting the Trees and filling close to 500 tags, which are then collected by our Coordinator. Delores Arsenault in Mount Uniacke, always one of our greatest supporters, filled 150 tags – thank you, Delores!

Other businesses that hosted Trees included West Hants Middle School, Annapolis Valley Regional School Board, and these locals: Credit Unions (Hantsport and Windsor), CIBC, Scotiabank (Hantsport and Windsor), Sobeys, Rossy, and Windsor’s Home Hardware and Swinamer’s Building Centre. Thank you all so much for your participation!

Special Mentions

Many local businesses and individuals go above and beyond in their efforts to support our programs. Special mentions include Windsor’s Home Hardware which supported us in many wonderful ways even beyond their Tree of Hope, including a new shopping party night at their store, with proceeds going towards our Telethon. The toy village and Santa photos were a hit and raised lots of gifts for our tree of hope this year. Home Hardware also allowed us to co-host the hot chocolate before the Santa Parade which was a great success.

Rose Real Estate and Chuck Porter were again marvelous for the Toy Drive; and Swinamer’s Building Centre for their wonderful support.

Several local individuals and businesses ran their own personal fundraising events and donated their proceeds to the Angels during the Telethon. Our Mother’s Keeper (Leesa White) collected beautiful hats and mittens. Windsor United Church (Mary Ruth Cochrane) collected five Sobeys bags of new hats/mittens for applicants. County Fair Mall, New Minas held a contest, and our decorated tree raised funds towards the telethon. Ginger LeBoutillier donated a Travelling Kindness Rock for auction.

This year our wonderful partnership with the local food bank, Matthew 25 continued with great success; we provided all the toys and food for all their families who applied. Our Coordinator also worked with The Salvation Army as well as the Kennetcook food bank.

As an additional benefit to our community and following our own tradition, food gift cards for our families were purchased from Brooklyn District School during their own fundraiser.

Our Volunteers

Along with a great board of directors, our success is really due to an amazing troop of volunteers. It is our volunteers who are able to run the annual Telethon, and many of our volunteers have been doing it every year for many years. We’ll recognize just a few of them here:

A special shout out to Marney, who organizes and handles all aspects of food and refreshments for the performers throughout the day. She makes it all look downright effortless, but we know better and appreciate everything she does.

Darrin Harvey was our Honorary Chair for 2016. Thank you Darrin for a marvelously well-done job!

Liz Robinson donated a beautiful painting for the winning bidder of the Sou’Wester during the Telethon. Thank you, Liz!

Our local fire departments (Windsor, Hantsport, and Brooklyn) were stellar again this year with their support. Members, many in full gear, march from their respective departments to the Hants County War Memorial Community Centre where the Telethon is being held, collecting donations along the way. Brooklyn raised over $3400 alone, and Windsor and Hantsport together raised almost $2700.

What more can we say?

Every year, being a part of the Christmas Angels is an amazing, heartwarming experience. Why don’t you join us next year?