Telcare has sent out its donations for 2021, detailed in a release that came out last week.

Those donations are from both SaskTel employees and Sasktel itself and are going towards a variety of causes in Saskatchewan and the country.

In total, SaskTel and its employees raised nearly $209,000 for a large variety of different causes.

That includes just over $5,000 raised by employees in the Estevan & District area, which went to the Alzheimer Society of Saskatchewan and the Kidney Foundation of Canada.

External Communications Manager Greg Jacobs explains just how the donations work.

"Employees do a payroll deduction on their biweekly payslip, and they allocate a certain amount of that towards a Telcare program that can then be donated to a number of different charitable donations," said Jacobs, "For every dollar that a SaskTel employee contributes, SaskTel the corporation will add 50 cents."

Those funds are then sent to different charities based on where the employees deem would be a good cause.

"The way that Telcare is constructed is that each district in the province and employees within that district decide where they want to allocate their funds," said Jacobs, "It makes the program really reflective of our employees."

While Telcare has seen a dip in the amount of money it's been receiving, Jacobs chalks that up to more stresses thanks to COVID.

"We have seen a slight dip in the number of employees and the value donated year over year," said Jacobs, "I imagine that everyone has been touched by COVID in some way, shape, or form. We expect that this has been the result of additional stress placed on everyone in society as a result of COVID."