The Carmel Fire Department Needs Your Assistance!

November 2020

The Community Assistance Program (CAP) is a longstanding tradition presented every year by the Carmel Fire Department (CFD). While there has always been a need for the CAP program in our community, with the current pandemic, that need has grown, and food insecurity is an even greater issue. Won’t you consider helping some of Carmel’s finest this holiday season and join us in supporting CAP?

What Is CAP?

Since 1967, CFD has delivered food and presents to families in need in Carmel. For more than five decades, CFD, along with the support from local residents and community members, has fed hundreds of at-risk families and countless smiles have appeared on the faces of our community’s children in need of some holiday cheer!

Chief David Haboush, Carmel Fire Department, shared, “We live in a blessed community, and it’s easy to assume that everybody’s needs are taken care of. The holidays can be tough for people, and this year, it’s even more difficult because we’re in the middle of a global pandemic. People are in crisis for lots of different reasons: loss of employment, food insecurities, mental illness, and so on and so forth. This program [CAP] helps bridge that gap that’s been created in our society, and from my perspective, it is so uplifting as it instills hope and humanity in our fellow citizens. CAP embodies what our community is all about and what firefighters stand and hope for.”

A Holiday Drive-Thru

For once, I get to report on a volunteer event that hasn’t been canceled by COVID-19. The reason why CAP can continue without issue is because it’s basically a drive-thru operation!

Carmel firefighter and PIO Tim Griffin shared, “CAP is something you can do with your family during this holiday season and really give back to people in a safe manner. The firefighters will be wearing masks while they are loading up cars and trucks and will keep socially distanced. For me, to see people in their cars, while we load up food and gifts in their trunks with Christmas music blasting in the [department] bays, is what I have envisioned firefighters and community members doing since I was a child. Because of COVID-19, we are going to have more people and families that need our help.”

The current CAP chair and CFD firefighter Jeremy Maners is wrapping up his last season as chair before passing the baton to a new chair next year. Maners grew up in Carmel and is part of a multigenerational lineage of firefighters. The CAP program is an annual tradition for his family as they make a day out of it.

“CAP provides food baskets for families as well as gifts for anybody under the age of 18,” Maners said. “In the last few years, we’ve had a lot of community support with sponsoring families and donating money, time and gifts.”

Maners shared that CFD [last year] provided around 200 families with food and gifts and approximately 175 of those were sponsored by members of the Carmel community.

“The families that weren’t sponsored, CFD takes care of them through funds donated to the department, and we do the shopping for those families. For me personally, the best thing that someone can do is to sponsor a family. My family, as a whole, we all sponsor a couple of families, and we have made a day of it. We go shopping, we buy gifts for everybody and then we come back, have dinner and wrap all the presents. It’s really rewarding to be able to do this as a family and give back. Many [people] don’t think of Carmel as having families in need, but there are many, and there are pockets in Carmel that are in extreme need, especially now with so many people being furloughed and laid-off.”

Ways You Can Help Support CAP

MAKE A DONATION

Checks made payable to CFD Auxiliary. Please write “CAP” in the memo line.

• Mail to CFD, Attn: CAP, 2 Civic Square, Carmel, IN 46032. Donations are tax-deductible.

BE A SPONSOR

Register with CFD by Dec. 1, 2020! Let them know how many children you’d like to purchase gifts for, and they will match you with children in need.

• Email CAP@carmel.in.gov to let CFD know you’d like to be a sponsor.

DELIVER FOOD & GIFTS

Help deliver food and gifts from CFD Headquarters to families in need on Dec. 12, 2020, 9–11 a.m.

• Email CAP@carmel.in.gov to let CFD know you’d like to be a delivery driver.

For more information on CFD’s Community Assistance Program, visit, carmelfd.com and click on Department Activities & Events.

Writer:

Janelle Morrison

Photography:

Courtesy of CFD