Submitted Photo Pictured are Adam Dolce, Amber Allison, Jose Quinones-Visot, of the Alliance, Mike Hallmark, Cat Childs, Shayna Jewell, Ashley Kirkland, and Rebecca Hamlet-Kapple. Not in the photo from Cattoo’s was Eric Barabasz.

The United Way of Northern Chautauqua County has announced that the winner of the 2018 United Community Christmas is Cattoo’s, in Dunkirk. They have collected the most likes, loves, and reactions on Facebook and were voted best tree in the Christmas tree decorating contest.

As the winner, they designated that the proceeds from the contest be donated to the Community Alliance for Suicide Prevention. The Alliance is a group of various agency professionals and community members with the common goal of creating awareness around the issue of suicide.

Cat Childs, owner, stated that, “Suicide prevention and awareness and work to ensure services are in place for anyone in need is very important to us. We take the cause very seriously, and are committed to it through the Semi-colon project as well. We had a lot of fun with the contest and our entire team came together to help promote Cattoo’s tree, after Amber and Ashley worked together to make this tree so beautiful.”

The contest was made possible by the donation of trees by the McTaggart family of Stockton. A committee from the United Way of Northern Chautauqua County worked to promote the contest to local businesses and raise the funds.

Voting took place on the Facebook page of the United Way, where visitors could look at the different trees and make a difficult decision about which was their favorite. The Facebook album had more than 20,000 visits and over 8,000 engagements over the course of the 2 week period when voting was open.

Executive Director Adam Dolce added, “This was a great way to engage our local businesses, our community, and our not-for-profits. Our United Way nearly doubled its Facebook audience in the 16-day period, and we certainly hope that the local businesses were also able to engage and develop a wider audience through this project. It was a special effort, and would not have been possible without the support of so many.”

Some of the trees even had families waiting to adopt them at the end of the contest, to help brighten their holiday.

The United Way of Northern Chautauqua County’s mission is to empower our local community through education, financial stability and health. One in three of our neighbors have been impacted by local outcome based programming, funded by strategic investments of $ 4,010,150 since 1999. The United Way is located at 626 Central Ave., Dunkirk. Visit us on the web at www.unitedwayncc.org; follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.