When most people think of The Salvation Army, the images that emerge are the bell-ringers and their red kettles encountered outside retail stores during the Christmas season or the Angel Tree program. They are, by a wide margin, the organization’s biggest and most effective marketing efforts. More importantly, they are the Salvation Army’s largest fundraisers.

While Christmas comes but once a year, the needs the Salvation Army meets are year-round. For many, the Salvation Army is out of sight, out of mind. It’s been that way for quite a long time.

To call attention to the work performed by the Salvation Army and the need for donations and volunteers beyond the Thanksgiving/Christmas season, President Dwight Eisenhower and Congress established a week as National Salvation Army Week in 1954.

It is easy to appeal to the generosity of spirit that Thanksgiving and Christmas inspire. It’s quite another matter when the calendar turns and the work of thousands of Salvation Army chapters goes on quietly, meeting the needs of the poor, certainly, but also other work that one doesn’t normally associate with the organization.

Local chapters celebrate Salvation Army Week in their own way — but all of them fulfill the nonprofit’s international mission, including “meeting human needs without discrimination; assisting about 23 million Americans annually; working in 133 countries; assembling an army of more than 1.8 million members; and, in continuous operation since 1865.”

In addition to meeting needs during this special week, Salvation Army chapters hope to raise awareness of all ways the organization serves the community, which they hope will inspire people to volunteer and donate either cash or household items that can be sold at the Salvation Army Thrift Store.

The funds raised by Salvation Army chapters stay in their community. Every dollar, every volunteer hour goes to help our neighbors for such things as food, clothing, utility bill assistance and other needs.

It may not be Thanksgiving or Christmas, but the work the Salvation quietly does every day in our community should inspire a spirit of generosity.

So we salute the Columbus Salvation Army and Captain Predeep Ramaji, commanding officer of the Columbus branch, for all they do for “the least of these” during National Salvation Army Week.

With the Columbus Dispatch