As the year comes to a close, the Keremeos branch of the Royal Canadian Legion #192 has embraced the spirit of the giving season as it always does.
This year, the Legion is contributing almost $22,000 to local students, charitable organizations and provincial groups.
With the Legion supported by the community, each year the organization and its members give back and return that support.
This year, there will be $7,500 in bursaries for students graduating from the Similkameen Elementary Secondary School in June 2024 worth $1,500 apiece.
The remainder of the funds, $14,500, is going to support a range of groups and charities.
The groups being supported are:
• The South Similkameen Medical Foundation for the support of the Orchard Haven long-term care facility in Keremeos
• The Penticton Regional Hospital’s Oncology Department expansion
• The BC Cancer Society
• BC Red Cross Emergency Relief
• BC Children’s Hospital
• Vancouver General Hospital
• The UBC Hospital Foundation’s burn unit
• The Lower Similkameen Community Services Society’s youth programs, Tumble Bumble program and Meals on Wheels
• The Similkameen Starfish Pack Program
• The Heart and Stroke Foundation
•The South Okanagan Similkameen Brain Injury Society,
• The ALS Society of BC
• The Friends of the Library in Keremeos
• Cars under the K
• Diabetes Canada
• Arthritis Research
• South Okanagan Women In Need Society
For the Legion, donations aren’t done for recognition but instead to return the support they receive from the community and to pay it forward.
“It’s from the involvement of the members that come to our meat draws and our pokers games that go into the fund, the 50/50 draws and all the different activities that we do throughout the year,” said Dale Hansen, the Legion’s secretary and head of the charity committee.
While the large donations are the most easily summed up, the Legion and its members give back through countless smaller ways throughout the year as well, with support giving to members who’ve been involved in car crashes and in one case, paying for the fuel costs for a cancer patient who needed to travel for treatment.
The donations and the funds that supply them are separate from the Poppy Fund, which is administered by the Legion’s command.
