CONNEAUT — Shoppers dashing to and from stores on Black Friday weren’t too busy to acknowledge people standing at the entrances, wearing smiles and red aprons and carrying bells.
Friday marked the Christmas season debut of the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle campaign, an annual fund-raiser to help the area’s needy. The kettles and volunteer bell-ringers will be a common sight at selected locations across the county during the next few weeks.
In Conneaut, Sue Horvath and her daughter Analynn DiFilippo were greeting shoppers at the Big Kmart at the Gateway Shopping Center. Business was brisk in the store, and that translated into plenty of activity around their kettle, they said.
“People are putting in not just coins, but dollar bills,” said Analynn, a freshman at Conneaut High School.
Mom agreed, saying many shoppers were pausing to make donations.
“Very few people are passing us by,” Horvath said.
That hasn’t always been the case. The pair, who also staffed a kettle last year, said contributions could be few and far between in 2008.
“Sometimes we’d only get two people in an hour,” Analynn said.
The Conneaut campaign raises money to help people in that city, as well as folks in Monroe, Pierpont and Kingsville townships and North Kingsville, Kristina Lamont, coordinator, said in a statement. Money helps provide food vouchers and energy assistance for folks in need, she said.
Cash from the kettles is critical to the Salvation Army budget, Lamont said in the statement. Some two-thirds of the local branch’s $15,300 budget is earned from the few weekends kettles are in place, she said.
In related news, the Jefferson unit of the Salvation Army is looking for folks to ring bells at supermarkets in the village. The Jefferson unit assists people in Jefferson, Rock Creek and Dorset Township. For information or to register, contact Pat Cramer at Jefferson United Methodist Church (440-576-4561).
In 2008, the Salvation Army collected more than $130 million nationally with its Red Kettle campaign, according to the organization’s Web site. Horvath and her daughter were joined by 25,000 other volunteers across the country. The money helps the Salvation Army lend a financial hand to some 30 million people every year, according to the Web site.
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