A cheque presentation was held at Peter Smith GM in Belleville who raised over $15,000 for two local organizations.
The Children’s Foundation and Gleaners Food Bank will be splitting the money.
Executive Director of The Children’s Foundation, Melanie Cressman, accepted the cheque.
“We’re so grateful to the Peter Smith team, they’ve been such strong supporters of the Children’s Foundation for years and this was a surprise. We weren’t expecting it,” Cressman tells Quinte News.
“We were notified at the beginning of the month that they would be doing a promotion but certainly didn’t anticipate such a generous donation. So we’re just thrilled, it’s going to do a lot of great work in the community.”
Money was raised through the sales of vehicles beginning in early December.
“We decided for the month of December to have a more charitable focus on our sales side, so $200 of every car we sold up until Christmas goes towards the donations,” General Manager of Peter Smith GM, Cole Allinger, tells Quinte News.
“We ended up at $15,400 that’s getting donated for the month.”
Allinger says staff picked the Children’s Foundation and Gleaners Food Bank as the organizations they wanted to donate to that would make the most impact for the community.
“The Children’s Foundation with the various things they do around mental health, as well as helping kids around Christmas and stuff, is very impactful,” Allinger says.
“Also, obviously, the scarcity of food is such a large portion and making sure people have enough sustenance around the holidays is extremely important. So that’s what we decided to get behind.”
Cressman says the money will be put back into the Children’s Foundation’s six core programs.
“This money is going to do things like it’s going to bridge the gap for financial barriers to play sports, to go to camp, to access mental health resources. You know, the list goes on and on,” Cressman said.
