Hopes high that program will return in 2024
The organizers of Operation Red Nose in Selkirk have officially made the decision to cancel the program for the 2023 holiday season.
Leslie Hanson, the Selkirk co-coordinator of Operation Red Nose, said that the reason for the decision to cancel this year was due to a lack of commitment from volunteers. Because people may rely on Operation Red Nose for a ride home, Hanson felt it was important that people know that this year they will have to make alternative arrangements to get home safely.
Operation Red Nose is a program that gets people who are under the influence and their vehicles home safely during the holiday season. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the program was put on hold during 2020, 2021, and 2022. Normally, the program preparations start early in the year but because of the uncertainty earlier this year as to what the COVID situation might be this winter, preparations didn’t start until later than usual.
“We were waiting. We made the decision in the late summer that we would try to get it organized again this year. In a normal year, we do start planning in April or May through the national office,” said Hanson.
Unfortunately, when Hanson did reach out to groups in our community who have volunteered in the past and to the community at large through social media, she did hear from people that they were thinking about participating but did not have the type of commitment that they needed in order to run the service.
“I can’t really plan on, ‘We might run. We might volunteer.’ It’s an important service and we have to have volunteers to run it. Over the course of the nine nights and looking at how many volunteers we typically will use over the full nine nights, it’s about 150 volunteers,” she said.
Volunteers also need to commit in advance because, in addition to ensuring every night has enough people available, they need to have a criminal record check done.
Normally, Operation Red Nose works with groups of volunteers from local children’s sports teams and their efforts go to supporting their organizations. Though Operation Red Nose does not charge for rides home, between donations and sponsorships, volunteers can raise a good amount for their organizations.
“The money is divided based on the number of volunteers that they have. We don’t do it by night, because some nights you don’t get as many donations and yet the volunteers still have to be there and available,” said Hanson.
According to Hanson, in 2019 most groups that volunteered made a minimum of $1300 for one night of volunteering and they had a few groups that did more than one night who earned almost $3000 for their organization.
“Altogether we dispersed about $11,000 back into community groups in the area [in 2019]. I think you have to sell a lot of chocolate bars to raise $11,000,” joked Hanson.
Unfortunately, a tough call to cancel had to be made to ensure that residents knew that they would have to make alternative arrangements this year in order to get home safely from holiday celebrations.
Hanson says that she’s hopeful that they will get back to it next year.
“We’re hoping that we will be back up and running [next year] and just and ongoing service for many years. Volunteers who have volunteered in the past really enjoy volunteering. Some of the younger people in the community who use Operation Red Nose think it’s a great service. They don’t have to phone mom or dad to come and pick them up at two o’clock in the morning and they can get home safely. It’s just a great fundraiser,” said Hanson.
