Kettle Donations: Hope after disasters
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 red kettle donations become hope for disaster survivors, and support for relief workers.
Minutes after a tornado, flood, fire, or other calamity strikes, government officials in Minnesota and North Dakota often call on The Salvation Army for short- and long-term assistance.
Short-term assistance means providing hot coffee, cold drinks and meals for survivors and first responders.
The food tastes good, too.
“The best pancakes in Crow Wing County,” affirmed New Ulm, Minn. resident Kristy Nelson, while cleaning debris at her mother’s home following last summer’s storms in northern Minnesota, where The Salvation Army spent days serving hot meals to hundreds. “It’s really helpful to have that support.”
Additionally, short-term assistance includes providing cleanup kits with bleach, rubber gloves, mops and other items.
It also means providing emotional and spiritual care, wherein trained staff and volunteers roam disaster sites to pray with survivors and offer a listening ear.
“They’re crying, I’m crying,” said volunteer Tom Brustad, a St. Paul native who spent two weeks providing emotional and spiritual care to survivors of the Oklahoma tornados of spring 2013. “This is heavy-duty stuff.”
Long-term disaster relief includes financial assistance and case management. After the devastating 2011 flood in Minot, N.D., for example, The Salvation Army provided survivors with more than $500,000 worth of direct financial assistance, such as gas and grocery cards. In the years after, Salvation Army social services staff continued to offer support to survivors, such as Shannon DeVries and her family.
“I’m not sure where we’d be without The Salvation Army,” DeVries said.
2015 kettle season
The new kettle season is officially underway.
There are 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 support disaster survivors and relief workers.
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 provide two cleanup kits for families recovering from a disaster.