The Estevan Family Resource Centre has come up with a new fundraiser for this year in order to continue its valuable services for the community.
The organization is holding a Growing Smiles fundraiser, in which the centre is selling beautiful, locally grown plants to help raise money for its programs. The family centre believes plants are a great way to encourage friends to get out into the garden while choosing to support a healthy fundraiser.
“It’s a good fit for us,” said family centre executive director Colleen Macmillan. “So you can go online and order plants. These are plants for outside, so hanging baskets and patio planters, herbs, succulents, individual plants, that sort of stuff.”
The fundraiser started May 1 and will continue until May 16. The order will go in on May 17, and flowers are scheduled to arrive May 27.
The fundraiser has been going very well thus far. There is no limit on the amount of products they can sell or order.
“We’re very happy with how much we’ve sold thus far,” she said.
Proceeds from the sale will go towards the centre’s operating costs, staffing and programming.
Traditionally the family centre has held a golf tournament as its biggest fundraiser of the year. But that has been called off due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the current challenges facing the energy sector, so Growing Smiles will be their biggest fundraiser of 2020.
“You have to figure out new ways of doing things that don’t bring a bunch of people together, so this was a great fit,” said Macmillan.
Sacred Heart School in Estevan has held this fundraiser before, and anyone who purchased through the school said the flowers they received were high quality, Macmillan said. The family centre reached out to the school to ensure they weren’t doing it this year before proceeding.
The pandemic has forced the family centre to put its popular Drop in and Play program on hold, and the centre’s counsellor has been working from home, although people can still call her for assistance. Macmillan is still in the office every day.
Everything they do is happening virtually, and people can still get emergency supplies of diapers, wipes, baby formula and more, although the family centre asks them to call ahead.
“Our kids programs are online, and we have a YouTube channel now. We’re using our Instagram and our Facebook and our Twitter and everything else, and we’ve done a lot of stuff on Zoom as well. Some of the stuff on Zoom is open to everyone. Other things are password protected, so you have to register for it,” she said.
The family centre is confident they will emerge from it, but this is tough, because they aren’t government-funded, and they aren’t sure what will be available from the Community Initiatives Fund, since the fund is supported by casinos, which are closed. So it means their fundraisers will be more important than ever.
“We’ve been here for 18 years, so I would hate to see that this is what would close the doors,” said Macmillan.
Visit https://estevanfamilycentre.growingsmilesfundraising.com for more details on the fundraiser.
