Prince George, B.C. – Just twelve days to go until Christmas and the Salvation Army is looking for both donations and volunteer help for its Christmas Kettle campaign.

Campaign co-ordinator Sharon Harder says that as of Friday the kettles had raised $115,133.49. She adds “we’re still short of our target of $250,000. The kettle campaign runs until December 24^th and we still have lots of (volunteer) hours to fill. I figure if one hundred people came forward and gave me two hours a day, we would pretty much fill up our calendar. Right now I’m working on the schedule from Monday the 15^th right up until the final day, the 24^th.”

Harder says “there’ve been a lot of groups that have come forward to volunteer so it’s been really good that way. The campaign is our number one fundraiser for the year and it helps us to succeed for the upcoming year. We fund all of our programming with it, things like the Christmas hampers, the Back to School backpack program, food bank, our emergency disaster relief. We also have on Saturdays where Operation Hunger Relief goes down to the Strathcona area, the Child Development Centre and feed homeless people down there every Saturday.”

“So it’s really important that we do meet our goal to help keep these programs in place and be able to do the job that we’re doing here.” Those who can spare a bit of time to jingle the bells at a kettle location are asked to contact Sharon at 250-596-4673.