Panda + Community Christmas 2016

Santa, a crazy tree dude, and The Panda in an ugly Christmas Sweater! Always a good time to be had at the Rotary Christmas Party this year.

We just finished up an amazing run of projects over the holiday season.  The one I am most proud of is that we were able to join forces with Great Lakes Farms and get 5000 pounds (17,000) Apples delivered to Christmas Care and packaged up into over 1500 individual packages to go into the hampers.  It took over 30 Rotary folks, family and friends to pull this project off this year.  The feedback from the folks receiving the hampers has been great, as the apples have been missing for the past several years. The Smart Panda is thrilled to make this project a reality again.

This year, another 112 bears were sold in this year’s Bears for Christmas Care campaign, and 64 of them were donated back to Christmas Care and $846.00 was donated back from the proceeds of the the sales. It was a hard sell through the month of November, but December saw an amazing effort put forth and we were able to make a lot of kids smile this year, in just a couple of hours all the effort will have been worth it!

Salvation Army allowed us to work with them on the Kettles again this year.  I personally must have wished 5,000 people a Merry Christmas during my shifts this year.  The Kettles raise a significant sum of money, all of which stays local in our community, and allows many great programs to run throughout the year.

We were also able to start the holiday season off in early November but take a day to Remember. A group of us from Rotary were out collecting donations for Poppies.  All of the proceeds we raised helps go back into the community to support Veterans.  Its great to give back to the Veterans since so much has been sacrificed for us to be able to enjoy all of what we have.

Looking forward to seeing what 2017 will bring! All The Best……