Ellsworth Church’s holiday fair proceeds will help heat homes of those in need

ELLSWORTH, Maine (WABI) -

Carol Mason and her group of volunteers at Saint Dunstan’s Episcopal Church are not letting the pandemic slow down their efforts to help Mainers this winter.

Their annual holiday fair, which is held to raise funds for local charities, is all online this year.

“This year we knew back in June that we probably wouldn’t be able to pull it off, so we decided to try it virtually since we have a beautiful website, we built the marketplace for it on the website,” said Carol Mason, Chair of the church’s holiday fair committee.

“We’ve had over 300 items divided up into baked goods and sewing creations and crafts, and miscellaneous treasures which are some of the things you can see here, things for kids, things for home, things for garden, what have you,” she added.

The church has already raised $4,000 dollars for THAW, a Downeast Community Partners program that helps those in need, stay warm in the winter months.

The Heat and Warmth Fund helps pay heating bills for those who cannot afford them on their own.

“Thaw is an extremely important charity they do tremendous work, they’re in great need this year especially with COVID and all the problems we’ve been having in the community,” said Mason.

Typically, in a normal year, the fair is one day long, but thanks to the change in format, the church has been able to extend the fair until December 12th.

If you’re interested in purchasing from the fair, or donating to the cause, here’s how you can do it.

“There is a marketplace button on the homepage, they hit that button, it takes them to three sections, we have three sections on the marketplace, wonderful online order form, it’s check only, they send us a check, and then on a given day which our next pickup days are December 11th and 12th right at our back door, they drive up, we have their package ready for them, and we can hand it to them with our masks on,” said Mason.

Visit the church’s website to find the virtual marketplace.

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