While a few donations are still trickling in, the Anna's House Baby Bottle Drive has come to a close.

The drive raised around $4,000 this year, which is down notably from the $7,300 collected last year.  However, Anna's House Executive Director Vicki Olatundun is taking an optimistic approach to the numbers.

"Some people use the figures they've raised before as the target for the year going," Olatundun explains.  "I'm just appreciative to get any money from our community.  Yes, the numbers from last year are down, but that's $4,000 that I would not have had.  So we can make that work and do lots of things with that, absolutely."

With Anna's House only weeks away from moving to a new location, Olatundun already has plans in place for how they are going to use the money.

"One of the things that we really wanted to do is enhace the baby space with those funds," she describes.  "We have a children's room that is much bigger than the one we have now, so all of the things we need to finish renovating that space and a little programming with what is left is what we will do with that."

There was one great sign of future success in this year's drive, and Olatundun explains that was the amount of new participants they had.

"This year the business community certainly accepted bottles from us and put them in their staff rooms," she notes.  "Lots of young children this year took part, I know some children in Niverville took part.  A young boy had actually put together his savings, it was $2.53 and he proudly brought that in, so we were very grateful for that family.  This year we reached areas we haven't reached before, which was nice."

Olatundun is very grateful for everyone who donated to the Baby Bottle Drive as she says there are many charities they could have given to in Steinbach, but chose them.