About Us Proud To be Celebrating 22 Years of Giving!
The shelters that many of us were already supporting said it was fairly easy to find groups willing to buy or sponsor Christmas gifts for children, but their mothers seemed to have been forgotten. We feel by supporting the mothers, they will, in turn, find the strength to create new lives for themselves and their children and not return to their abuser, and will feel stronger for their children. That is why our group “The Basketeers” was created. We are a generous group of around 3500 volunteers with large hearts. We are not a registered charity, every basket donated is a gift of encouragement and support for a woman as she transitions back into the community.
We’ve grown! In 2000, we donated 14 baskets to one shelter and in 2021 we supported 37 women’s shelters in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick with a total of 831 beautifully wrapped gift card bundles and basket combination. In 22 years, $4.75 Million dollars of in-kind donations were generously donated and 22,505 women have received a new beginning basket from the Basketeers!
In twenty-two years, we have grown from the original group of Basketeers covering the Greater Toronto Area and we now have 11 additional chapters located in Stratford, Ottawa, Niagara-West, Guelph-Wellington, Kitchener, Kingston, Windsor, Thunder Bay, Huron, Montreal, QC and Moncton New Brunswick. Each chapter has its own specific dates instructions regarding their campaign. Just click on your specific chapter location for specifics.
Last year because of the pandemic we needed to pivot our campaign quickly to online financial donations. Our 2021 campaign was hugely successful raising $124,645 to create gift card bundles and baskets in some communities.
This year there are still so many unknowns with COVID 19 and we feel that this year’s Basketeers campaign needs to be launched with everyone’s safety and well-being as our top priorities. This includes the safety of chapter leads, volunteers, donors as well as the shelters and the women that receive the beautiful gift bundles donated.
With the multiple changes over the last year, I have decided to close the GTA Basketeers (see 2022 newsletter) but eleven other chapters are continuing to make baskets and support shelters with their 2022 fall campaign.
Violence is on the rise again this year and because of COVID 19 many women are home and cannot leave to access a safe place. It's difficult for us to know in advance how many women we will be able to support this year, but not having some sort of campaign doesn’t feel right. For more information about what women are currently facing, please visit: https://canadianwomen.org/blog/gaslighting-how-to-recognize-this-form-of-emotional-abuse/.
Please visit the 2022 Basketeers Campaign page to learn more about how the Basketeers are collecting donations this year and in which cities.
Please note that no tax receipt will be issued as we are not a registered charity.
You can also download our brochure (PDF) for an overview of the Basketeers that you can keep and share offline.
Cheryl Stoneburgh
Basketeers Founder
www.basketeers.org