The holiday season can keep us hustling and bustling and hyper-focused on our own plans and preparations for the season.
But we hope that sometime during the season of giving, community members are finding ways to help those in Nanaimo who aren’t as privileged or as fortunate. There is great need in our city and our region. The Nanaimo Foundation’s most recent Vital Signs report showed that the number of residents living in poverty had increased by nearly 1,000 people over a five-year period.
Community members who have been just barely making ends meet are surely being challenged right now, as food prices are soaring, rents keep going up, and wages aren’t keeping pace with inflation. This Christmas is going to be hard on many families in Nanaimo.
Charities are continuing their worthwhile work to try to provide gifts and smiles – and in some cases, the bare necessities – and it must be especially difficult for them this year as the cost of living is making it more difficult for people to dig deep in their pockets. With that in mind, we hope people will do what they can, and support food drives, coat drives and toy drives. We’re partial to our Coins for Kids charity in support of the Great Nanaimo Toy Drive and BGC Central Vancouver Island, and it’s meant a lot to hear coins clinking into the jar at the News Bulletin reception desk this month, but there are countless causes worth supporting at this time of year.
So if we’ve finished our shopping and find we have something to spare, maybe we can think about how to give one more gift from the goodness of our heart, to someone who might not have been on our list. And somebody, somewhere in our community, might silently thank us, and maybe it will be a merrier Christmas.
READ ALSO: Coins for Kids collecting cash in Nanaimo to help child-focused charities at Christmas time
editor@nanaimobulletin.com
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