Royal City Mission credits community response in call for donations

The Guelph community has answered the call in helping a local homeless shelter keep its doors open.

The Royal City Mission was on the verge of having to reduce hours and services unless it was able to raise around $70,000 by mid-October.

Pastor Kevin Coghill said on Friday they were able to reach their target goal.

“Even the first day, we started to see people respond quickly,” said Coghill, who also serves as executive director at the Royal City Mission.

“There has been amazing little donations that I know people always think, ‘It wasn’t very much.’ But the reality is, it was a bunch of small donations that made up a large amount.”

The organization is located inside Chalmers United Church on Quebec Street and provides shelter and meals for people less fortunate. Coghill said they will be able continue to with their service delivery until the end of January.

“Without that money, we were going to be cutting back four hours a day of programming.”

However, despite reaching their goal, they are not exactly out of the woods yet. With the economy affecting people’s pocketbooks, they will be watching to see how things will continue to unfold.

“We don’t really know how the donations will go in the next two months,” Coghill said. “One of the reasons we were in this spot was donations were down over the summer and our services had gone up 30 per cent.”

At one point, Coghill said they served over 1,900 people in just one week.

— with files from Global News’ Mike Hodges.

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