History
The Salvation Army was founded in 1865 in London, England. The movement spread to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1899. Each year The Salvation Army serves more than 100,000 Alabamians in Jefferson, Shelby, and Saint Clair counties, making it the largest social service agency in Central Alabama.
Full-time Salvation Army officers and employees run 14 local programs which range from emergency shelters for homeless men, women, and children, to a school and home for at-risk adolescents and teens.
There are three Salvation Army corps (churches) in the metropolitan Birmingham area, where soldiers (parishioners) worship and serve the community.
During the 2002 Christmas season, volunteer bell ringers helped to raise $320,000 at The Salvation Army's popular red kettle stands across the Greater Birmingham area. Bolstered by several media partnerships, corporate commitments, and individual public support, The Salvation Army's Angel Tree Program provided Christmas gifts and toys for nearly 9,500 needy local boys and girls in 2002.
The Salvation Army provides 24 hour, 7 days a week support for the Birmingham area community. Whether dispatching its mobile canteen to feed and counsel workers and victims in times of disaster, or providing a haven for substance abusers to recover from addictions and the homeless to find accomodation and jobs, The Salvation Army is staid on its focus - to serve Body and soul all who come to us for help.
Red Kettle History
In 1891, Salvation Army Captain Joseph McFee was distraught because so many poor individuals in San Francisco were going hungry. During the holiday season, he resolved to provide a free Christmas dinner for the destitute and poverty-stricken. He only had one major hurdle to overcome -- funding the project.
Where would the money come from, he wondered. He lay awake nights, worrying, thinking, praying about how he could find the funds to fulfill his commitment of feeding 1,000 of the city's poorest individuals on Christmas Day. As he pondered the issue, his thoughts drifted back to his sailor days in Liverpool, England. He remembered how at Stage Landing, where the boats came in, there was a large, iron kettle called "Simpson's Pot" into which passers-by tossed a coin or two to help the poor.
The next day Captain McFee placed a similar pot at the Oakland Ferry Landing at the foot of Market Street. Beside the pot, he placed a sign that read, "Keep the Pot Boiling." He soon had the money to see that the needy people were properly fed at Christmas.
Six years later, the kettle idea spread from the west coast to the Boston area. That year, the combined effort nationwide resulted in 150,000 Christmas dinners for the needy. In 1901, kettle contributions in New York City provided funds for the first mammoth sit-down dinner in Madison Square Garden, a custom that continued for many years. Today in the U.S., The Salvation Army assists more than four-and-a-half million people during the Thanksgiving and Christmas time periods.
Captain McFee's kettle idea launched a tradition that has spread not only throughout the United States, but all across the world. Kettles are now used in such distant lands as Korea, Japan, Chile and many European countries. Everywhere, public contributions to Salvation Army kettles enable the organization to continue its year-round efforts at helping those who would otherwise be forgotten.
The History of The Salvation Army Angel Tree
Along with the familiar Red Kettles, the Angel Tree program is one of The Salvation Army's highest profile Christmas efforts. Angel Tree was created by The Salvation Army in 1979 by Majors Charles and Shirley White when they worked with a Lynchburg, Virginia shopping mall to provide clothing and toys for children at Christmas time.
The program got its name because the Whites identified the wishes of local children by writing their gift needs on Hallmark greeting cards featuring pictures of angels and placing them on a Christmas Tree at the mall. Thanks to the Whites, who were assigned by The Army to the Lynchburg area at the time, more than 700 children had a brighter Christmas that first year.
Three years later, when the Whites were transferred to Nashville, Tennessee, Angel Tree was launched in Music City during the 1982 Christmas season. WSM radio, which airs the Grand Ol' Opry, came on board that year as the first Angel Tree co-sponsor in the U.S.
Because of the on-air promotion on WSM in Nashville, as well as national publicity on CNN and the Larry King Show, news of Angel Tree spread across the country like wild fire. Since that time, the program has grown to include Angel Trees in throughout the Birmingham area.
In 2007, The Salvation Army partnered with Fox6 Gifts for Kids, a program designed to give foster children in the Birmingham metro area Christamas gifts. With this partnership, 7,113 children were helped.