Salvation Army’s Christmas Kettle kick-started with $1.5M from President

The Salvation Army on Friday launched its annual Christmas Appeal at the Georgetown Club, with a first contribution of $1.5 million from Government to support this worthy cause.

The Christmas Kettle is a traditional initiative to raise funds to keep the Salvation Army’s humanitarian work going. It is done annually throughout the world at Christmas, having first started in 1891 to assist those in need.
Divisional Commander of the Salvation Army, Major Matignol Saint-Lot expressed that the Christmas Appeal is even more needed at this time, having seen an increasing demand to help people. This has been a result of the COVID-19 pandemic which resulted in grave economic hardship across the world.
“After the severe hit of COVID-19 in the past two years, the demand to help others has been rising daily. The Salvation Army is seeing an increased demand from people in need due to the scars of COVID-19 and the rise of the cost of living in the whole world. The Christmas Kettle Appeal 2022 is now more important,” the Divisional Commander relayed.
President Dr Irfaan Ali in his feature address, expressed that giving should not be a seasonal activity. The art of giving, he added, must be a way of life and makes up an individual’s value system.
“Giving cannot be a seasonal activity…In this art of giving, it must be a way of life. It must be something that you believe in. It must be something that makes up your value system. It must be something that gives you pride and joy and honour when you give.”
“There is a big difference between giving and distributing. Giving is fundamentally different from distributing. Giving is an attachment to your inner soul and being. It is not separating material things from you. It is allowing your value system to share something material, physical, emotional, mental,” President Ali voiced.

Lifting humanity
The Head of State reminded that lifting humanity through giving should happen every day, highlighting that organisations like the Salvation Army are bringing a societal approach to helping those in need.
He noted that the mission is to build a better Guyana by creating valuable citizens. In this regard, systemic issues are being weeded out to bridge generational gaps.
“We try to give people an opportunity to have change in their life, to be reintegrated into society, and creating valuable citizens. We cannot create an awesome country if we don’t create value in every single citizen of our country. That is why although we have to do the technical and hard work in transforming the country, I’m spending a lot of time on the systemic issues,” he told the gathering.
Support for this initiative also came from several private sector donors, and other stakeholders. Some of the major donors to the Salvation Army include National Hardware (Guyana) Limited, Bounty Supermarket, Massy Stores, Survival Supermarket, MovieTowne, Republic Bank Guyana Limited, Mattai’s Supermarket, KFC, Muneshwers among others. (G12)