Mandy thanked everyone who took part in our furniture drive this past Saturday. In total they supported 11 families with furniture and household items. Mandy admitted at the beginning of the week, she was concerned about furniture donations, but after only 4 pickups were confirmed on Tuesday, this quickly grew to 11 pickups by Friday with 2 being very large pickups. The store is now bursting at the seams ready to support the next set of families.
The committee has now supported a total of 257 families since starting in October 2022! Our wait list currently has about 50 families in need of furniture. It was in the news recently that about 1000 Ukrainian refugees arrived in March as the last chance to enter Canada under the CUAET (Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel) program. This should keep us busy for a while yet.
Our families were very appreciative of the support. Some recently arrived while others have been here for about a year and still in need. One family had young children including a newborn so they were excited to receive a whole bunch of baby items. Another family was excited to receive twin bunk beds that they were in need of with their limited space and large family.
A special moment was when Wendy from Accent Environments dropped by with 3 large IKEA bags full of brand new IKEA household items that they collected from their staff. Incredible to see this support and they found us through a quick search on google.
Special thanks to Chuck and Lyle for cleaning the sidewalk in front of the store. The sidewalk was full of gravel and dirt and now is nice and clean keeping our furniture nice and clean.
*Next drive in 2 weeks*. We are planning for our next furniture drive event for Saturday, April 27th. Mandy will send you another note about this opportunity closer to the date.