Kettle Donations: Filling empty bellies
Ever wonder how The Salvation Army uses your red kettle donations?
If so, you’re not alone. For 125 years, people have been dropping money into red kettles blissfully unaware of the drastic amounts of good they are accomplishing.
“Kettle Donations” is an eight-part series that provides answers. We’ll explore a new Salvation Army program every week until Christmas. In the end, you’ll understand precisely how your kettle donations change lives during the Christmas season and year-round.
Your kettle donations become nutritious hot meals for people and families without food.
The Salvation Army operates nearly 20 hot meal programs in Minnesota and North Dakota, from the windswept prairie town of Jamestown, N.D., to bustling downtown Rochester, Minn. All told, these programs last year served more than 800,000 meals.
Example: Staff and volunteers at The Salvation Army in Duluth, Minn., cook hot lunches for about 100 people every weekday. That includes Bob Moore (pictured), an octogenarian who is poor and lives in a trailer.
“All these people need this,” said Moore, while eating sloppy joes with dozens of others in the Duluth Salvation Army cafeteria. “The Salvation Army is doing good.”
Most of our hot meal programs are served year-round, with a small number served during summer only. The Salvation Army in Fargo, N.D., offers a robust hot meal program that includes weekday lunches year-round and also lunches for children during summer months. The youth lunches are served in the very neighborhoods where the kids live (pictured), with similar programs offered in the Minnesota cities of Mankato, Virginia and Willmar.
“It’s an excellent program – really great food and the kids love to eat it,” said Fargo resident Caroline Fehr, a single mother of six kids. “It’s always a warm and friendly environment and I appreciate that.”
2015 kettle season
A new kettle season officially begins the day after Thanksgiving, with select kettle locations beginning earlier.
There will be about 900 kettle locations throughout Minnesota and North Dakota. Please give a little something each time you pass by one, knowing your gift will allow The Salvation Army to serve hot meals to hungry individuals and families.
If you’d like to take your kettle experience to the next level, sign up to be a bell ringer. In just two hours you’ll raise an average of $60 – enough money for The Salvation Army to serve a hot meal to more than 30 people.