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Salmon Arm resident overwhelmed with support for northern neighbours in need

More than $5,000 donated in 24 hours for holiday care packages
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Jessica Chevallier and son Rhett Lambert, and friends Tara Irmen and Garret Pristie, stand next to a pickup truck loaded with food to be boxed up for shipping to needy families involved with the group, Helping Our Northern Neighbours. (Lachlan Labere-Salmon Arm Observer)

Boxing Day gets underway early this year for Jessica Chevallier.

The Salmon Arm photographer will be spending her Sunday afternoon, Nov. 20, with helpers filling more than 70 medium-sized Canada Post flat rate boxes with several thousand dollars in food and toiletries, to be shipped to families living in Northern Canada where the cost of living, as Chevallier puts it, is “astronomical.”

The money for this endeavour, approximately $5,200 in donations as of Thursday, Nov. 17, was received over the span of about 24 hours after Chevallier shared a post on social media explaining she is once again looking to support families through Helping Our Northern Neighbours, a Facebook group she learned about and joined a few years ago.

“The organizer lives in the north so she is in contact with all of the food banks and all of the stuff like that, and she gets applications for families in need so you can sponsor them… They give you how many people are in a household, their ages, clothing size, etc., and contact information so you actually get to communicate with them and figure out what they need. So I started doing that. I sponsor a family,” said Chevallier.

Last year, Chevallier shared a post on Instagram about Helping our Northern Neighbours, and quickly received offers of support. She received $1,700 in donations which enabled her to send 20 boxes of food and other goods to families.

“It’s a lot of work to do, because you have to shop accordingly, try and get things that people need but also don’t weigh too much, and you have to weigh every single box,” said Chevallier who was not prepared for the support she’s received this year.

“I kind of panicked yesterday – we hit three grand within a couple of hours of me sharing it on Instagram… ,” said Chevallier. “So I started asking people, ‘would you be able to help me?’”

Read more: Canada’s inflation rate drops slightly in September even as food costs climb

Read more:Food bank usage across Canada hit all-time high, nearly 1.5M visits in March: report

The generosity may have led to a shortage on pre-paid boxes at Salmon Arm Canada Post outlets. Chevallier said Thursday she already had 65 and was heading to the post office in Blind Bay to pick up another 10 or so.

“I have to pick which post office lady’s day I’m going to ruin,” said Chevallier with a laugh, recognizing the work involved. “They have to enter every single box because you get a tracking order for each of them. Which is nice because then I can send it to the family and then they know because most of the families up there just have PO boxes, not physical addresses, so they like to know when their package is coming so they don’t go all they way to the post office and keep checking.”

Chevallier, with help from friends, has been busy buying the items for the boxes which will be packed up on Sunday, Nov. 20, in space provided by Salmon Arm’s Mr. Mikes thanks to friend Garret Pristie.

Asked how she feels about all the support received so quickly, Chevallier said it was a bit intimidating, but she’s definitely happy.

“The whole goal of it was to be able to send more to more families from where I originally started,” said Chevallier. “I could send four or five boxes to the family that I sponsored. I was thinking about the price of food up there, food and everything else, it’s just so astronomical. I’m thinking to myself, how will they ever afford to go the extra mile to get their kids Christmas gifts… because at the end of the day, they’re strapped for money.”

After Sunday, Chevallier asked that anyone wishing to donate to Helping Our Northern Neighbours do so directly. Donations can be made via Paypal or electronic money transfer to HelpingOurNorthernNeighbours@yahoo.com.



lachlan@saobserver.net
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