Free Turkeys for Christmas

The Schreiber Senior Centre has once again stepped up to bring a little joy into the lives of our local seniors.

When the centre was established, it was decided early on that its main priority would be to help uplift seniors and recognize their contributions to the township. Since its inception there are now over 300 members, and despite the impositions of dealing with the COVID pandemic, programme coordinator Cathy Carlino has consistently come up with new and creative ideas to keep the older population Schreiber connected and appreciated.

Last year seniors were given hampers with food and various other items at Christmas. A lot of effort goes into to creating these hampers, from purchasing the items and receiving donations and then finding volunteers to pack and deliver the packages.

This year the decision was made to scale back a bit but Cathy insisted that some form of gift giving would still happen. Food prices have escalated over the last year so it was decided that every member would be given a Christmas turkey but then the realization of how to pull this off occurred. The first problem was that the local grocery store would not be able to provide the amount of turkeys needed so calls went out to source a new supply in time for the holidays. Over 250 turkeys would need to be purchased and there would be a limit of 1 per household. Any remaining would be donated to the food bank and some would be distributed to folks in need who might not be actual seniors or even members of the centre.

Funds had been earmarked for the purchase, made available through the profits from the very successful summer barbecues that happened every Thursday afternoon over the course of the summer months and other donations the senior centre had received. The turkeys arrived and a distribution point was created at the recreation centre where people could either pick up their turkeys or in some cases volunteers would make the deliveries. Volunteers were also on hand to assist people in renewing their memberships to the centre.