Between 8 a.m. and noon on Friday, volunteers will deliver over 1,100 Christmas hampers and 1,000 toys to people in need across Guelph.
Tim Zekgeld, an organizer helping oversee the process this year, said about 75 hampers will be distributed every 15 minutes.
"It doesn’t make sense to me on paper — it doesn’t seem possible — but the process is so refined that they manage,” said Zekfeld.
Salvation Army staff and volunteers spent the entire day preparing the hampers.
Kevin Broughton has been volunteering every year for over 20 years. In that time he has seen the process of packing the hampers refined to a science.
There are three different kinds of hampers that are packed — one for families, one for people who are single and a third cultural hamper filled with food more oriented to ethnic taste buds.
For the day, the gymnasium at the Salvation Army Citadel is converted to part warehouse and part grocery store. Mountains of food items are placed into shopping carts driven one at a time by volunteers.
“Everybody has one job to do, so you don’t have people having to do multiple things. I work at Toyota, so I see how the process is important. This works out really well,” said Kevin.
He said this is the first year that single and cultural hampers outnumber the family ones.
"I think that’s just indicative of how the community is changing," said Kevin.
Twenty-three years ago, Kevin was facing his first Christmas as a single father.
“I was left at home with three boys and we didn’t know how we were going to do Christmas. Somebody from the Salvation Army surprised us with a hamper, so every year this is giving back,” said Kevin.
He is just one of a number of people who has been on the receiving end of the program and come back year after year to volunteer.
Kevin's wife Bev Broughton is the program coordinator for the Christmas hamper program, which is funded through the church's kettles that are seen this time of year in stores and malls around town.
Bev said the Salvation Army has raised $116,000, about 75 per cent of its $160,000 goal.
“The money that is raised from the kettles is what is helping to purchase all of this food and gift certificates,” said Bev.
The kettles will be out in the community until about 2 p.m. on Monday.
“There are still a couple of days for people to get their donations in," said Bev. “If there is a shortfall we just have to figure it out. It comes from somewhere else in the budget.”
