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Community Corner

Goodfellows Wrap Months-Long Effort to Help Families in Need

Volunteers say their efforts to raise donations of food, clothing and toys for the holidays are a responsibility to help their Canton neighbors.

More than 200 local families will benefit Saturday from a food and toy donation drive held by the Canton Goodfellows, an organization that has been helping neighbors in need since 1954.

Throughout all of November and into this month, members of the nonprofit group have been gathering donations at the township's administration building and arranging gift bags, food, necessities and toys, in keeping with the chapter's founding motto, "No Canton child without a Christmas."

Friday, the Goodfellows completed bagging up items, including those in a room that looked transplanted from a Toys R Us store. Saturday morning, volunteers with the Goodfellows will hand out the donations to families who applied for help two months ago.

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Canton Goodfellows President Nancy Spencer said people seem more desperate than in previous years. "This year we even have families who had donated in past years, but who are now on the receiving end," she said. "There is a lot of need in Canton. People don't see it with many of the large homes, but families are going through hard times and job losses."

The families are found through the Plymouth-Canton Community Schools, which sends a Goodfellows application for help in October to parents of students who get free or reduced lunches, Spencer said. The organization checks into the background of families who return the form to determine if the need is genuine.

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As the donation drive begins in November, people are told they can contribute to any family, or if a family's needs are verified early enough, their sizes and requests are given anonymously to the donor. Each request also includes a child's wish list of up to a $50 value.

Give Canton residents have this year, filling more than five large rooms at the administration building with food, clothing and toys, sorted through by about 100 volunteers over the past couple of weeks. Businesses such as , and also joined the effort, donating gift cards and discount coupons to each family. Donations to Goodfellows, a 501(c)(3) organizaton, are tax deductible.

Longtime township resident Ruth Wiles said she has been a Goodfellows volunteer since the chapter's beginning, when most of the township was still farmland. She said she's seen the Christmas effort grow from just a handful of assisted families then to the hundreds helped today. "I do it because I love my neighbors. We need to love one another," she said.

Spencer said she participates because of the duty a community has toward every resident. "It really does take a village. Who else should be helping our neighbors? That's our responsibility," she said.

Correction: The larger businesses that contributed to this year's Goodfellows drive include Meijer, Walmart and Kohl's.

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