During the 2017 year, Salvation Army has had a lot of success. 

"The kettle season was very good for us this year, we met our goal of 30,000 we just came over it of 31,000 and so we're pretty excited with that," stated Family Services Coordinator Ronza Reynard. 

"We had quite a few volunteers, some first timers. We had a lot of ECS students and some service groups and businesses doing their team building and helping out in the community. It was very successful, we had so many volunteers that we actually had to have some people just be put on the list for next year." 

"The people who when they got to the kettle they just really owned it in the sense that we had people playing guitars and harps, we had kids singing. They really embraced the whole spirit of Christmas while they were at the kettles," she shared. 

Overall, there were a lot of donations as well. 

"Every donation is special to us because it's our donations that keep us going and we've just been getting continual donations even up until today. We still have people coming up with donations," explained Ronza.

"We're trying to hit an overall goal of 100,000. Right now we are a little short on that goal but we have a couple of days until the end of the year, so hopefully that will be met." 

The food bank also did very well with donations.

"The food bank looks very good, the shelves are nice and full. We've probably got into a close to 5,000 pounds of food over Christmas, that will take us right into February for sure," she expressed.

"Right now there's a few items that we're still a little short on but people still continue to donate so we're very thankful. We're short on canned ham and turkeys, soup crackers, rice, canned stews, one liter juices and coffee and tea. If people want to know what else we need just call us and we will give you our list." 

"We want the thank the community. We want to thank the services groups, the churches, the businesses, the individuals who had their children out ringing the bells with them, the ECS students who volunteer, the hockey team that came and helped carry the hampers out of our building. Just  the community in general really supported the angel tree and just came together for Christmas to make Christmas good for everybody this year."