Another record year for Pennies for Presents

NLP office manager Kim Sayer couldn't be more tickled the Pennies for Presents total has already exceeded last year's amount.

Ashley Degraaf
Buy Cowichan News Leader Pictorial Photos Online

A slow start to this year’s cash collecting for the News Leader Pictorial’s Pennies for Presents campaign didn’t stifle the annual charity drive. Quite the opposite actually, reports NLP office manager Kim Sayer.

“We’re at an amazing $15,800 with more to go,” Sayer said, pumped pennies have been pouring in and staff and volunteers have again surpassed another year’s total.

Last year, NLP cashed in $15,679.13 for six valley charities with about $5,000 of that snagged from the inaugural book sale. This year’s second go at the book sale was again a huge boost to the drive, Sayer said, topping last year’s total with $7,400 raised.

“We had no idea it would be such a huge success. What can we say? The people of the Cowichan Valley love books,” she said, adding post-book sale doom and gloom about a slugglish start to cash donations didn’t last long.

“Over the past few years, we’ve noticed a decline in coin coming in and beyond that, less paper money and less silver,” Sayer summed of Pennies’ tins circulated around the community as well as personal donations. “We realize that many families are stretched thin with regard to money allocated to charity.”

But kudos are in order to staff and students at George Bonner Middle School, who raised $1,350 toward the drive, Sayer noted.

“(Teacher Sue Murray) has been a great advocate for our Pennies program and has encouraged her class every year to collect and beat their goal from the prior year.

“Khowhemun, Bench and Alex Aiken schools also collected another $1,250 between them.”

Another boost to the campaign was the use of Island Savings Centre’s new coin-sorting machine. “In previous years, we’ve relied solely on volunteers and staff for rolling each and every coin that’s collected,” Sayer said. “We processed about $6,000 in coin through that machine and that’s a lot of coin.”

Donations from coppers, silver and folding cash plus the book sale proceeds will be shared by the valley’s four food banks: Cowichan Valley Basket Society, Lake Cowichan Food Bank, Chemainus’ Harvest House and the south-end’s CMS Food Bank, as well as Cowichan’s Salvation Army, and Cowichan Women Against Violence.