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Can you believe Christmas is right around the corner already? Now, some Belizeans, especially in the Culture Capital may be protesting because the 19th of November is naturally the next big celebration and nothing should take away from that.  But, the Salvation Army hopes everyone can give them a break since their kettle drive is for a worthy cause. The Salvation Army officially launched their kettle appeal today in front of the Scotiabank downtown branch. We stopped by to capture the Christmas carol-singing children and find out how all your monetary contributions will go a long way this Christmas:

Major Jonathan Kellman - District Commander, Salvation Army Belize
"We are excited to launch the kettle this year as you can probably hear from me earlier. It is just a great opportunity to touch the lives of many people and because we look after many children and adults during the year, this is just another opportunity that we can really get closer and the hearts of people are tender at this time of the year and so all through the year and all through the world at this time of the year salvation army is reaching out, not only receiving but giving at the same time in a tremendous way."

Reporter
"Now the target and how do we reach it?"

Major Jonathan Kellman
"The target for this year is $100,000, it will be in two ways, from the kettle appeal and the mail appeal, the letters go out simultaneously with the kettle appeal so people will soon start to see the letter in their mail box and this year we also added our bank account number because some people might just want to do it online, so we are going to start from today we are going to creep up to December 25th but before that we have certain targets in place because we have the children's dinner for 700 children at Holy Redeemer on the 6th of December so we actually want to give a great drive from now so we can get the toys in and so we can get the funds to buy the food stuff for that occasion. We can't do it on our own and sometimes we may look to the public sector but private sector has a great role to play because they have a lot more capital to work with."

Erwin Arthurs - Manager, Scotia Bank Belize City
"This is the 4th year we have partnered with the Salvation Army, particularly because we know that they will reach the people we really want to reach. It is starting to become a tradition for us and we see this as a good way to give back. They have always asked us to support and we are always willing to facilitate them."

The red kettles will be stationed at the usual spots at the Scotia bank branch on Albert Street and on the northern highway, also at Brodies and Publics. In terms of last year's drive, the Salvation Army was short of $6,000 from their usual target of $100,000.

Now, we are used to seeing the Salvation Army kettles around the city leading up to Christmas time but the new commander Jonathan Kellman, who has taken over from Major Joliker Leandre, reminded us today that they work all year round. Kellman says they cater to 2,500 persons every month through their food pantry programs and any additional contributions throughout the year will be appreciated to help fund those programs:

Major Jonathan Kellman 
"We do our own welfare program every month, people come to the office and we put together food hampers, we register them and there are people who come on a one off thing along the way so the funds that we have help us to carry us at least to June and we hope for corporate donations to take us to December so the funds come in in waves so we would say that yes Christmas is the time we look forward to people giving but if people can think of us quarterly or something like that maybe in a smaller contribution but every amount goes a long way."

The Salvation Army is also asking for assistance on their service days which will be on November 23rd and December 14th. They hope to get businesses and other corporate citizens to donate on those days and get people to donate as well.

As the new Salvation Army Commander in the city, Kellman also told us about his new vision and approach to social outreach:

Major Jonathan Kellman 
"One thing that we will be trying to do as we go on because I am new and I am trying to assess the place but one thing we will try to do in the new year is to see how we can help some people to move from that total dependency into one step at a time so we will see how we can partner with other agencies and how we can initiate something to you know as they say we can give a man fish to eat or we can teach a man how to fish and I see, because I used to live in Belize before, 21 years ago and I come back and see some of the similar things still exist so I think now and I am looking at it now from a new point of view and returning, how can we help to reduce , not totally alleviate but reduce the poverty level, how we can partner, we don't have much resources, I know that but when we work together with other people we can start to make some changes in small areas so you will hear more from us in 2020."