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#BetterTogether

Local shopping initiative helping Red Deer Christmas Bureau

Dec 14, 2020 | 4:07 PM

Local businesses are banding together this holiday season to help promote shopping close to home while at the same time raising money for the Red Deer Christmas Bureau.

#BetterTogether was created to help encourage Central Albertans to redirect their holiday spending into their local economy while raising money for those most in-need in our community.

Angela Hall, owner and operator of Meadow Farm Florals who spear-headed the initiative, says driving to her favourite local coffee shop two months ago only to find it boarded up triggered her to do something about the circumstances many in our community are facing.

“I don’t know their story intimately, as I am new to the area, but what I do know, is that with those boarded-up windows, came the loss of a dream for a family just like my own,” she explains. “I made a sincere effort to design the initiative in such a way that would push it into the ‘win-win’ category. I did not ask a single business to get involved. They were all motivated to participate entirely of their own volition and I think that was a huge key to the success we are seeing.”

Each participating business has donated products and/or services for the cause. To help incentivize shoppers to buy locally, anyone who submitted their receipts for purchases made across central Alberta, were entered into a draw to win one of five of the donated items.

The remaining items have gone up for bid in a silent auction which will run online from Dec. 14-17, with 100 per cent of the proceeds from the auction going to the Red Deer Christmas Bureau.

Despite all those “wins,” Hall says the families and individuals in our community who are facing loss of work, illness, despair and challenges they could have never imagined, will hopefully be the ultimate winners.

“I personally don’t know how to help those families and individuals directly, but the Red Deer Christmas Bureau does. This initiative is about more than making sure there are presents under trees and food on tables on Christmas Day. It is about bringing hope to our neighbours who need it the most.”

With more than 110 local businesses participating, Hall says the goal is to raise more than $10,000 for the Red Deer Christmas Bureau.

“There are hundreds, if not thousands of people waiting at the finish line, whether they know it or not, who need us,” she suggests. “The needs they have this year are so much more complicated and unique than ever before. I want to cross that finish line with a dollar value that we could have never thought possible.”

Nearly $20,000 in products and services have been donated to the auction by local businesses so far, with over $64,000 of local spending recorded as a direct result of the initiative.

“Businesses stepped up in the most genuine way I could have imagined,” proclaims Hall. “Businesses highlighted one another genuinely, enthusiastically, and with a spirit of cooperation.”

“To anyone feeling lost, abandoned, weak, hurt, or ill – take heart,” suggests Hall. “We are holding you up in the best way we know how and it will get better. Alone, we can do good but together, we are great.”

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