The Salvation Army’s Gladstone Community Church has raised $2,000 for Malawi.
Centretown’s Gladstone Community Church has raised more than $2,000 towards a campaign aimed at funding the Salvation Army in Malawi.
The Salvation Army’s Partners in Mission campaign raises funds for the ministry of the Army around the world. This year, money raised by Canadian chapters will be sent to chapters in Malawi where Army officers will use the collected funds to address specific community needs.
The Salvation Army has collaborated with local schools in Malawi to provide lunches to some 600 students every day. It also runs an orphanage for children who have been left without parents because of HIV/ AIDS. The funds would be used to support these ongoing initiatives, said Salvation Army officer Ginny Kristensen of the Gladstone Church.
When the campaign ended in late April, said Kristensen, the Salvation Army’s 391 Gladstone Ave. church had raised a total of $2,130.30.
Marginalized Centretown citizens provided many of the donations.
The Gladstone church offers an outreach program, providing community meals a few nights every week for those who are marginalized, homeless, or at risk of becoming homeless. On average, the church provides meals for between 50 and 125 people each night.
“When we saw this partnership with Malawi, said Kristensen, “we decided to run it as a fundraiser within our folks who come from the streets.”
The church ran the Partners in Mission campaign as a penny drive – just as that denomination was being phased out.
“One fellow brought in a little bag of pennies and he apologized that he couldn’t give me more,” she said. “But he had to use some of them to buy food that day.”
It’s been about five or six years since Gladstone has participated in the campaign, but Kristensen thought that this year it would be appropriate to take part “because pennies don’t buy much here, but pennies in Malawi can feed a family.”
Kristensen originally set a goal of $500 for the campaign. “As an incentive, I had promised everyone if they exceeded the goal by 10 per cent, I would cook a typical Malawian meal for them,” she said. “Well, they exceeded it by over 400 per cent!”
“Next year, we will attempt to beat what we raised this year,” she said. “We will do our best to exceed the donation value.”