$77,500 donated at May Chamber of Commerce meeting
June 3, 2024, 8:30 am
Ashley Bochek
Moosomin Chamber of Commerce members donated $77,500 to local projects at the May 28 chamber meeting. Tim Hortons presented $45,000 from Smile Cookie Sales to Play Fair Daycare, Borderland Co-op presented $15,000 to the Moosomin Visual Arts Centre, and after a presentation by McNaughton High School on the need for a renovation, Chamber members lined up to present contributions to the renovation project, totalling $17,500. The Minister of Education, Jeremy Cockrill spoke at the meeting.
Tim Hortons Donation to Play Fair Daycare
Moosomin raised the highest amount of Smile Cookie Sales in any community of Saskatchewan for the third year in a row. Tim Hortons presented $45,000 of Smile Cookie proceeds to the Play Fair Daycare.
Moosomin Tim Hortons owner, Greg Crisanti, says they are thankful to present the donation to the new daycare.
“Thank you to the community. It was another amazing campaign. Thank you to Terri and the group at Play Fair. It speaks volumes. It is amazing work and we don’t achieve these results without everyone. Huge thank you to everyone who bought a cookie during Smile Cookie week. We know it will be put to good use. We appreciate everyone’s support.”
Jill Jones of the Play Fair Daycare board thanked the community and Tim Hortons for the support. “On behalf of Play Fair Daycare, we just want to formally thank Tim Hortons for including us in the success of their Smile Cookie campaign. We are beyond grateful they chose our organization to make such a valuable donation to. We thank everyone for participating in this fundraiser.”
Borderland Co-op Donation to MVAC
The Borderland Co-op donated $15,000 to the Moosomin Visual Arts Centre for technology programming.
Sam McGonigal of Borderland Co-op says, “I was at the first Chamber meeting when it was first announced and I just knew this was going to be a great thing for our community. Borderland Co-op is so widespread, that every community that we are in would be able to utilize it and it just made sense for this being something that we would want to be a part of for sure—we just wanted to help out.”
Krista Crellin, chair of the Moosomin Visual Arts Centre, said the donation will go toward equipment needed to offer digital art programming. “This will get us computers and tablets so we can offer some more programming.”
Crellin said the arts centre is developing programming quickly, and classes are filling.“It is coming along quicker than I thought,” she said.
Terry adds, “The stained glass studio is ready and we held our first class there last night, and the clay studio is almost ready, we just need a little more money and equipment and we’ll be rolling with that.”
McNaughton High School home ec renovation donations
McNaughton High School principal Sherrie Meredith, vice-principal Scott Sully and Home Ec teacher Laura Teale told chamber members the plan for renovations to the home ec space.
“The dream was to do a swap of the home ec lab and our library so it was by the concession,” Meredith said. “In 2019, we did a board presentation and it was well received, and then the pandemic hit, but then when we went to look back at it in 2022 unfortunately the cost had gone up. We had a community consultation this past January and we agreed to apply for a minor capital project (a provincial grant of up to $10 million). The School Division forwarded that to the province and it was not approved. We then decided to move to Plan B in March this year for the minor renovation, just focusing on the home ec lab renovation.”
Sully said most of the funding for the renovation will be coming from the Southeast Cornerstone School Division. “The large portion of funding for this renovation of the existing home ec lab will be coming from the school division as PMR (Preventative Maintenance and Renewal) funding,” he said.
“The school division has pledged $150,000 of funding for the renovation,” Meredith added. “They have let us know they are making sure this project gets done.”
“I can tell you from the division, we are committed to the project,” Jeff St. Onge, superintendent of Southeast Cornerstone School Division said. The estimates need to come in. We are less worried about the money, we are more focused on making it happen.”
Sully said the school is looking for community support on top of the school division funding for upgrades and new equipment. “We are looking for local support for filling the kitchen. We are looking for support for new appliances, filling cabinets, and determining on the level of support we would be looking to do some new improvements in the kitchen like stainless steel upgrades, appliance upgrades, and air quality. We are looking for support.”
“We feel a new space is deserving of new equipment to match with that,” Meredith added. “Our school Community Council has been amazing with helping us start off this letter campaign. They are also running a taco fundraiser on Thursday and then next week at the track meet they are hosting a Booster Juice fundraiser.
“We set an initial fundraising goal of $50,000 and we thought that would do the filling the room aspects of things.
Donations were presented from Celebration Ford for $5,000, The Moosomin Thrift Store for $5,000, Hebert Grain Ventures for $5,000 Robert Mullett of Mullett’s Home Hardware in honour of his daughter who was a student at McNaughton High School for $1,000. Craig Roy also indicated he will donate $1,000 and there was one other donation at the Chamber meeting. The total donations presented to the McNaughton High School home economics renovation was $17,500.
