Volunteers from the Centre d’aide Rockland Help Centre spent some time after Remembrance Day setting up a special Christmas Tree at the Parent Your Independent Grocer Store in Rockland. Then, with a little help from store staff, they decorated the tree with paper angels, each one marked for a girl or a boy, with the age of a child also inscribed.

It’s all part of the Help Centre’s annual Christmas strategy to help the local families who depend on the food bank to help them enjoy a decent standard of living. Residents can pick one of the paper angels, buy a gift suitable to the age and gender of the child, and bring it back, unwrapped, inside a gift bag for deposit at the tree.

The non-profit agency has a list of families in need with children who would love to see a Christmas present waiting for them when they wake up December 25 morning. All Angel Tree gifts should be brought back to the tree by December 13 for later distribution to their designated recipients.

André Perras, president of the Centre d’aide Rockland Help Centre, noted that the pandemic has forced the non-profit group to alter its annual Guignolée Food Drive project. This year Help Centre volunteers will not be going door to door to collect donations of cash and/or food items for Christmas food hampers.

Instead the Help Centre is doing a virtual Guignolée donation drive through its website until December 6. Anyone who wants to donate money to help buy food for the Christmas hampers can go to website and click on the donation link and follow the instructions.

Donors can also phone the Help Centre office to get instructions on how to mail in a donation or donate using e-transfer or other method.

Distribution of Christmas hampers will take place December 18.