“I’m not lost. If you are stuck out in the cold, please take me to keep warm!”
So reads a message left on a coat wrapped around a downtown Halifax lamp pole. The giveaway is part of an initiative by a group of eight children in the community who are decorating the streets with jackets, gloves and scarves as donations to the city’s homeless.
We live in a caring community! Great to see coats downtown for whoever might need one in this cold weather. pic.twitter.com/kRAvIlWdDV
— FEED NOVA SCOTIA (@FEEDNOVASCOTIA) November 16, 2015
Tara Smith-Atkins, the mother of one of the children, organizes an annual coat drive every year and decided this year would offer a great opportunity to teach her daughter a valuable lesson on her birthday.
Despite complaining about being cold and begging for the car heater to be turned on after spending an hour outside, Smith-Atkins says the children “definitely learned the importance of it.”
It’s estimated that over 1,700 people in Halifax are homeless, with almost 20,000 living in core housing need.
This is what the ‘spirit of the season’ is all about.