Santa Under The Bridge Completed

Our Santa Under The Bridge elves made one last stop today. Well, 2 stops actually. Nancy and I attended the annual Christmas meeting at Freedom Foundation this morning and since we were making our final delivery today, we wore our santa suits to the meeting. To protect the anonymity of others present at that meeting, we did not take any pictures.

When we arrived at Club 24, we found a group of volunteers preparing for the Cocktail Party later today. Most of them are Shawn's children. Shawn is wearing the santa hat in the photo.

We delivered ten gift packs as well as jars of peanut butter, mayonnaise, ketchup and tins of cranberry sauce to help them with any meals they may put on.

This concludes our project for 2014.  The total number of organizations we helped was 15. We estimate that Last House on the Block Society has donated 188 scarves (170 diversity and 18 fleece scarves), 188 christmas cards, 364 pairs of thermal socks, 182 tuques, 170 bars of soap, 74 bottles of ladies toiletry items, 12 jewelry items, 12 stuffed animals, 18 coloring books with crayons, 6 men's belts, 170 god bags, and we have no idea how many candy canes because they were handfuls of. All in all, we had a very merry time doing it.

I would also like to mention that our Board of Directors now has 8 members. Nancy B. Scribner has volunteered and been accepted as our newest board member. Once I get all the photos of our directors updated, there will be a blog post to let you know who the Board of Directors are and why we do what we do.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Santa Under The Bridge Photos

Alcare Place

Santa Sacks

 

Brunswick St. Mission

Direction 180

Direction 180

Feeding Others Of Dartmouth

Freedom Foundation of NS

Friendship Center

Friendship Center

Giant Tiger

Gift Pack

Laing House

Laing House

Laing House

Margeurite Center

Freedom Foundation

Alcare Place

Shelter Nova Scotia

Souls Harbor Rescue Mission

Stepping Stone

Stewart House/Amethyst Apartments

The Elves went Downtown

Some of the girls at Shannex on Baker Drive were kind enough to donate some jars of peanut butter to Last House on the Block Society. We put those together with some we had, threw in a few bottles of ketchup, mayonnaise, and cans of cranberry sauce, got a santa sack and filled it to overflowing with tuques, mittens, gloves, scarves, belts, socks, and a winter coat, then we dropped it all off at the soup kitchen in downtown Dartmouth.

Then, we popped over to the Canadian Mental Health Association on King Street and dropped off 12 of our gift packs for the Among Friends Social Club on Ochterloney Street.

This brings our Santa Under The Bridge donations up to 14 organizations. Only 13 places received Diversity Scarves because we have sadly run out of those. We have another place to give to on Christmas Eve. The scarves we get done between now and then will be for them. That will be Club 24 on Dundas Street. They also have meals they serve there so we plan to donate some food items as well.

Still 12 days until Christmas Eve. Can we make the deadline?

Checking our List, Checking it Twice

The elves are still busy. A few new ones have joined and we're getting ready to finish off the project.

Out of the Cold Shelter declined our donations. due to limited space they only accept the items specified on their list but they thanked us anyway. But that's a good thing because it shortens our list.

What we're looking at now is Among Friends Social Club in downtown Dartmouth (that one is done, just needs to be wrapped and delivered).

Club 24 also in downtown Dartmouth is on our list. We do that one on Christmas Eve so there's still two weeks to prepare that.

Feeding Others of Dartmouth is the soup kitchen in downtown Dartmouth where I spent many a day enjoying a hot meal when I was homeless. I even worked there at one point. What we can do with them is we have some donated food items, plus we have some leftover thermal socks, tuques, mittens, scarves that were donated that are not handmade but still very warm and if we have any of our scarves we can give those also. We probably won't need to individually bag those, just a bag of socks, a bag of scarves, a bag of mittens, etc. and then their clients can just help themselves.

Week Two

Nancy and I braved the subzero temperatures this morning to make 2 more deliveries. Here we are, standing outside Stewart Place in Dartmouth North. Stewart Place is one of the Metro Non Profit Housing Association's affordable second stage housing projects. Stewart Place houses 16 men. We generally give 12 gift packs, but we felt it wouldn't be very christmasey to give to some and not to all, so we brought 16 gift packs.

The helpful staff advised us that the office for Stewart Place was also the office for Amethyst Apartments (a second stage building for 12 women) so we left all the santa sacks with her for safe-keeping.

Later we stopped in to Giant Tiger in Woodlawn and managed to get a group shot with owner/managers Scott and his wife Patty.

Giant Tiger in Woodlawn has been a big part of our Santa Under The Bridge project. Nancy gets a lot of wool there, they have displayed posters of fundraising events we conduct, we purchased most of our supplies there and they gave us discounts on that, plus we bought our suits there. Tina (a staff person) was kind enough to shoot the photo.

You might have noticed I'm wearing the pink tuque instead of my santa cap. This is one the tuques that was donated to us. One of our directors was thoughtful enough to get our society name on the front.

Day 5

Nothing much to report today. We packaged up some Santa sacks for Stewart Place. That's one of the Metro Non Profit Housing buildings in Dartmouth North. They provide safe housing for men. We did not deliver those today because we also want to do another of their buildings, Amethyst Apartments, which provides safe housing for women. The problem is that we're running out of scarves. We have delivered 120 diversity scarves so far. Stewart Place brings that number up to 136. We have enough scarves to do Amethyst and probably two more places, but the scarves don't have their fringes yet. So,Nancy, our fringe lady, will take care of those this weekend and on Monday we'll put on our elf suits and away we'll go. So if you live in Dartmouth North and you look out your window on Monday and see Santa's elves, it will probably be us.

We anticipate the delivery of more scarves over the next few weeks. We'll keep you posted.

Day Four of Santa Under The Bridge

Day Four of Santa Under The Bridge started at the Margeurite Centre in Timberlea. We were there last year so they were sort of expecting us. When they looked out the window and saw Santa's elves in the yard they came out to receive the santa sacks we had prepared for them.

We drove back to Halifax and stopped in at Alcare Place.

From there we drove down to Laing House. The staff member on duty was certain he should call everyone down because he knew they'd want to see Santa's Elves. We got a few group photos and one of LHOTB's angels by the tree.

Afterward we went to Stepping Stones on Maitland Street. I forgot to bring my camera in but Mary popped off a shot or two.

 Last on our list today was the Brunswick Street Mission.

We had a blast today. They even got a smile or two out of the old Grinch.