By Troy Gillard and Josh Hall

long-time community supporter comes on board

The Outreach Centre seeks Adopt a Family sponsors

Nov 29, 2020 | 12:00 PM

A familiar face has joined The Outreach Centre to help drum up money needed for them to help those in need.

Ray McBeth is the organization’s new Director of Development.

A past CEO of the Red Deer Regional Health Foundation and long-time supporter of the Central Alberta Women’s Emergency Shelter, McBeth says The Outreach Centre was an easy cause to get behind.

“It’s stuff that I’m close to and understand pretty well. You’ve got to have a pretty hard heart not to for some of the agony that people go through with domestic violence, and some of the increases that are happening,” he said.

In 2019, The Outreach Centre helped over 200 families, including 450 children, with this year’s numbers already surpassing those totals, McBeth said.

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“(It’s) because of COVID, of course. People are cooped up and can’t go out and tempers get short so abuse goes up, alcohol consumption goes up. That’s when you know you’ve got problems.”

The Outreach Centre has an annual budget of about $3.2 million. Most is paid by government while the centre is left to solicit $500,000 from the local community.

“But the beauty of it is, in all honesty, is no matter how tough things get, Red Deer citizens support places like us. They’re so good,” said McBeth.

The Outreach Centre is currently looking for sponsors for its Adopt a Family program, which is particularly busy during the holiday season. The program focuses on single parent families who are struggling and require extra help to provide for their family.

McBeth says they hope to raise $60,000 for the program.

“We put together packages for families coming in looking for support. We make sure they’ve got food and clothing and those types of things. Housing, if they don’t have relatives they can stay with we’ll provide housing for them as well. We also give them gift cards ($50-75) to purchase some gifts for the children.”

In all his years involved in local fundraising McBeth says he can’t recall a year as stressful as 2020.

“For the amount of people that are out of work and don’t have hope of finding anything for the next while, until we get COVID-19 under control we’re going to have to get through this one way or another.”

McBeth says their annual Charity Checkstop fundraiser remains slated for Saturday, December 5 at Taylor Drive.

More information on The Outreach Centre and the Adopt a Family program can be found at their website.