A big thank-you to the community from the Windsor Goodfellows.
This year's holiday newspaper drive has officially wrapped up and club president Gilbert Barichello says while a grand total isn't known yet, it looks like they'll reach their goal of $275,000.
Nearly 600 volunteers were out Thursday, Friday and Saturday collecting donations on street corners in Windsor, LaSalle and Tecumseh.
Barichello says the community always comes through.
"This is a very generous city because I know we are one charity and there are many other good charities also and it's always the same pocket and for them to come out like this is great," he said. "The other thing would be to thank the people that went out on the streets because without them we wouldn't have this money."
The money is used for food donations, a shoe and boot program and breakfast programs at area schools.
Barichello says the programs they offer wouldn't be possible without the newspaper drive.
"It enables us to carry on and do our projects that we do, the breakfast program and the shoe program that goes in the schools, to maintain it or even expand it," said Barichello. "We're very happy when we can reach that because 83-cents of every dollar goes into the food."
The donation are still being counted and organizers hope to have a final total this week.
Barichello says they're hoping to expand their breakfast program with a portion of this year's funds.
"The breakfast program, which right now exists in nine schools, we've been in contact with people from the school board, we're looking at expanding to a few more schools in that program," he said.
The newspaper drive accounts for more than 40% of the Goodfellows annual budget.