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Salvation Army wants $12m in kettle

Published:Saturday | November 13, 2010 | 12:00 AM
The Salvation Army Havendale Early Childcare students dance as the Scotiabank and the Salvation Army launch the 2010 Christmas Kettle Appeal at Scotiabank Centre at the corner of Duke and Port Royal streets, downtown Kingston, yesterday. - Rudolph Brown/Photographer

You know the Yuletide season is near when you hear the bells and see the kettles. The Salvation Army launched its Christmas Kettle Appeal for 2010 yesterday at the Scotiabank Centre in downtown Kingston. It is the ninth year the bank has partnered with the organisation.

This year's theme is 'Christmas Giving Hope'. The Salvation Army's Major Stanley Griffin, divisional commander, said the bells remind us there is hope for a better life. Chief Secretary Lieutenant Colonel Lindsay Rowe also encouraged members of corporate Jamaica and the wider community to give, as by doing so, they would be helping the army do God's work.

The target for Christmas donations is J$12 million. Scotiabank donated the first million and was followed by other members of the business community and individual citizens who dropped their donations into the kettle.

Give generously

Kingston's Mayor Desmond McKenzie challenged Jamaicans who were going to have a "white Christmas" that they had an "overriding responsibility to give and give generously" so that Christmas could offer some semblance of hope to the less fortunate.

Scotiabank President and CEO, Bruce Bowen, acknowledged that 2010 had been a tough year filled with catastrophic incidents, including the economic downturn, the west Kingston incursion, and the effects of nature on both Jamaica and neighbour, Haiti.

He commended the Salvation Army for its tremendous work in assisting the most vulnerable, and announced further collaboration between the bank and the organisation, including the refurbishing of the Salvation Army's thrift shop on Orange Street, as well as a donation of computers to the army's Mannings Hill centre.

The Christmas Kettle Appeal was started in 1891 by Salvation Army Captain Joseph McFee in San Francisco. He wanted to provide a free Christmas dinner for the poor and decided to pay for it by collecting money in a kettle he hung near ferry ports.

Today, the kettles can be found in most major cities around the world as far away as Japan and Korea.