Christmas kettle concerns for Salvation Army

• Christmas Kettle donations down
• Hoping more people can donate

With ten days until Christmas, donations to The Salvation Army kettle campaign are down.

Some community kettles in B.C. are off as much as 50 per cent compared to last year.

Money collected through the kettles are relied on to help people all year long. Almost 70 per cent of the funds are raised during November and December.

Mark Wagner with The Salvation Army in Kelowna told Kelowna10 there is still some worry in the community.

“We’re not panicked because we still have some time to go before Christmas, we really do need to keep donations coming in,” he said. “The main issue from my perspective is that it’s the need which has gone way up. For our Christmas blessing program, that’s gone from about 500 families to about 675 families and growing.”

Wagner said with the challenges of forest fires in the summer, and flooding in the fall, it’s possible a lot of those funds will be allocated towards those who were affected by the washouts.

“The main thing is people get helped, that’s what were concerned about.”

Wagner hopes the community will come forward and help.

“We've got lots of different folks helping us out. We got Rotary clubs and Lions clubs and Scotiabank did a matching donation day. We have a Walmart donation matching day coming up so the community at the corporate level has been very generous,” he said. “We’re moderately concerned, but we believe the people of Kelowna will come through.”

The provincial goal is $5 million to help struggling families and individuals.

As of Dec. 14, Kelowna has raised over $119,000, with $23,000 of that coming from the newly introduced tap feature.

Kelowna is down over $40,000 compared to last year.

People can donate at any Christmas Kettles around the city or online.