The Chatham-Kent Salvation Army is into the final push for its Red Kettle campaign.
Their goal this year is to raise $500,000. Red Kettles will be out in the community until about 2 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
"We're about $70,000 short so far," said Major Stephen Holland. "So we've got about five days to get about $70,000 to reach our goal."
Some of the money raised goes to help local families in need this Christmas.
"It costs us a lot of money to buy toys and to feed people, so it helps," said Holland. "We had 965 households that we had to provide food for this year at Christmas, and 748 children that we had to have toys for. So we had to spend some of that money on toys and food."
Holland said the remaining money goes towards their other programs throughout the year.
"The rest of the year we provide food for our four food banks, and we help people with various emergency needs. So we use it wherever we can to help people in our community."
Holland added that they still need more volunteers to fill some shifts at the Red Kettles throughout Chatham-Kent.
"We have about 27 shifts that are open right now, two-hour shifts, between now and Christmas Eve, about 2 in the afternoon. So we could use some volunteers to help fill those shifts. If we don't have somebody there, we can't get the money, so we would like to have some volunteers. We also need people to just continue to give."
To volunteer, call the kettle coordinator at 519-354-8353.
