Kettle Campaign accepting debit at some locations locally

The Salvation Army Christmas Kettle Campaign has gone high tech.

There are fifteen kettles set up around the city this year and Major Bonita McGory tells BayToday a few locations have debit machines to accept donations.

“People have been saying over the years, ‘if you have a debit machine I could give’ others have said ‘if you have a debit machine you’d make more money’ so we figured, hey, let’s try it and see if it works,” she says.

The debit machines are located at Parker’s Your Independent Grocer, Walmart and Canadian Tire, which then goes to Metro midway through the campaign.

$150,000 is the goal of the campaign this year.

“The need has gone up, we are seeing more and more people at the food bank, we are seeing more and more kids at schools, we have four schools that we provide kids with lunches,” McGory says.

The Salvation Army’s Christmas Program is set to serve 700 families in the North Bay area with Christmas Hampers this year.

They also say this past year emergency food services were provided to over 3,200 people, over 2,500 hot meals, 25 children were sent to camp and 3,900 lunches were provided to local schools.

Household supports and emergency respites were also provided.

(Major Bonita McGory of the Salvation Army and John Dobbs Director of Program Services recently kicked off this year’s Christmas Kettle Campaign: Photo by Linda Holmes/BayToday)