Folks over at the Salvation Army were busy packing up hampers this season to help low-income families get through the holidays.

Over 1,000 Swift Current residents were gifted hampers full of gifts this Christmas, thanks to the efforts of local organizations and businesses in the area. 

Bill Mailman, a corps officer and pastor for the non-profit, said while it ended up successful this year, they faced some challenges. 

"It went quite well – we kind of had to make some adjustments on the fly as we had some staffing shortages this year, so we need to do some adaptation," he said. "But overall, it went pretty well. We ended up doing over 400 hampers.

"Everybody just comes together usually at this time of year, but we had a couple of businesses step up to help with the with the toys, especially. As always, a Canadian Tire with their Toys Days. It's really, really helpful partnering with them. As for the Wish Tree, we had the Standard Nissan, Standard Dodge and Cypress Ford, and they all came together, and they each contributed about $5,000 to help purchase toys for our toy hampers this year."

Mailman explained that the goal of collecting for the hampers, is to meet the needs of Swift Current and surrounding areas over Christmas holidays. Families that find themselves struggling to provide meals or gifts for their loved ones, can receive a hamper to help get them through the busy season. 

"We know that sometimes people can make it throughout the year, or there's some people who just need a little bit of extra help around Christmas – especially this year. When the cost of living has gone up, they sometimes can make ends meet, but then Christmas comes around and there's just those extra obligations sometimes or little extra expenses. And they you know they can't really. They don't have enough to provide gifts for their kids or cover a special Christmas meal. So this is to help with that."