Students from Mother Teresa Early Childhood Learning Centre painted the windows at Sobeys last Thursday to help kick off this year’s donut campaign. Taylor Weaver Meridian Source
Students at Mother Teresa Early Childhood Learning Centre are sprinkling the world with kindness with the help of Sobeys with the return of their donut campaign.
The donut campaign, which runs for the next three weeks, is a fundraising partnership between the school and Sobeys Lloydminster where students design special “kindness” donuts, which are then brought to life by the team at Sobeys and sold to raise money for local non-profits.
Now in its second year, the campaign kicked off last Thursday when Grade 1 students bused to Sobeys to paint donuts on store-front windows to promote the project. Donuts officially went on sale as of Sunday, and all funds raised through this year’s campaign will support the Lloydminster Rescue Squad, Border Paws Animal Shelter, formerly known as the SPCA, Furbabies, Big Brothers Big Sisters, KidSport, and the Goat’s Christmas Wish.
“Each class has designed a donut and the donut has key kindness ingredients in it. Those donuts will be recreated by the bakers here at Sobeys,” said Grade 1 teacher Paige Kindopp.
“This is our second year doing it and we hope to raise over $7,000; half of that money would go towards some of the local organizations.”
Kindopp said the idea for a fundraiser involving donuts stemmed from pop star Justin Bieber’s success with Tim Horton’s donuts during the pandemic.
“This is something we started last year with Michelle from Sobeys,” said Kindopp. “Justin Bieber was making it big with donuts (at the time) and I thought we could make it big with donuts as well in a world where there’s so many unknowns. We wanted to try to bring the community together, so why not with donuts? Everyone loves donuts. It also lead to a student-driven project where students got to design the different types of ingredients.”
Michelle Rusteika, who owns Sobeys with her husband, Kevin, was thrilled to be back on board for another year and said there’s a bigger-picture effect of campaigns like this.
“We now are building six-year-old community builders,” she said. “They talked to community organizations, they asked the questions, they decided where this money’s going to go … they’re little three-foot community builders, and I love it.
“I can’t even tell you how important giving back to this community is. We’ve raised our kids in this community, the school has been there for our children, and to be able to give back and work with kids is amazing.”
Rusteika also noted how blown away she was at the success of last year’s campaign.
“Last year, it took off and was far beyond what we initially projected and set plans for; it just went crazy. It was joy in a not-so-joyful time,” she said in relation to the pandemic. “It really touched the community and the community backed it, 100 per cent. I’m excited for this year.”
Another fun element of last year’s campaign was the community challenge aspect, which Rusteika and Kindopp are excited to bring back.
“Last year we did a business challenge,” said Rusteika. “I believe Synergy started it and they challenged the LCSD division office, who then challenged another business, and it went on and on. We were delivering donuts and challenging other places to purchase donuts and pay it forward so kindness kept moving on.
“We’ll be challenging some businesses again this year.”
