Breakfast at the Christmas Office brought to you in 2024

Edmonton Christmas Office observes an increase in demand during the holiday season. The Bureau’s Ana Sandiego joined CTV Morning Live’s Kent Morrison to discuss how you can help Edmontonians in need.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Kent Morrison: Hundreds of people gather for breakfast at the Edmonton Convention Center to enjoy some holiday cheer while supporting a charity that provides tens of thousands of meals and gifts to Edmontonians in need this Christmas. This year, demand has increased by 39%. Anna, can you tell us about this breakfast? This hasn’t happened for years. Why did you bring it back?

Ana Sandiego: It’s the 39th annual Christmas Bureau breakfast and we’re really excited. We brought it back because it is the Christmas Office’s flagship fundraiser. We are raising funds to provide Christmas food hampers and support our Adopt-A-Teen program.

Kent: Can you tell us more about how the program works? How does the Christmas Office take these donations and money and turn them into gifts and food for people?

Ana: When people support our events in this way or donate online, it goes directly to the agenda of these two programs. Our deserving individuals and families who have applied will receive their hampers. Some of them will also receive gift cards for groceries, and then our teens in the Adopt-A-Teen program will receive gift cards so that they can buy things that they need, things that they wanted that they couldn’t get. It brings them Christmas joy and happiness and a little bit of freedom this holiday season.

Kent: How many people do you want to help this holiday season?

Ana: In 2023, we actually helped approximately 55,000 people and received over 17,000 approved applications. We see that we’ll probably see the same numbers this year, maybe a little bit higher, so that’s about what we expect.

Kent: There are many people there enjoying breakfast with you this morning, but others are eating breakfast at home and may want to help. How can others get involved in helping you?

Ana: We would like to engage the community. We have volunteer opportunities, but the best way to help would be to make a donation to the Edmonton Christmas Office as we raise funds for the program next month. So anything we collect now will help the program and will go directly into the bins delivered on December 21st.

Kent: What do you hear from your volunteers when you all gather on the day of delivery about how important it is that this happens every year?

Ana: Being able to get involved in this is a really meaningful experience for our volunteers. I think that for many people Christmas and holidays are a time of warmth. It is a time to meet family and loved ones. But it’s also a really lonely and stressful time for many people. I think that the commitment that our volunteers can bring joy to families, people, individuals, seniors who feel lonely during this time is a really rewarding feeling. It also lets them know that this is not a stereotypical low-income person or someone they might think would benefit from programs like ours. These are the people your children go to school with. It opens people’s eyes to who actually benefits from these programs and how they can get more involved.

The Christmas Office is asking for donations to be made online to avoid the impact of the Canada Post strike.