Zainab Al-Mehdar
Shawville May 13, 2022
Learning about the war in Ukraine, Colin Dubé, a student at the Pontiac Continuing Education school in Shawville, went to his teachers and asked if they could help raise awareness and money to help people displaced by the war.
Dubé put a proposal to . . .
the governing board which led the school to organize a series of fundraisers. “Without Colin’s initial idea we would not have started this fundraising campaign,” said Nancy Peterson, a long time teacher who was involved in the fundraising efforts.
The first was organizing Easter baskets filled with an assortment of chocolates and flowers. The second thing they did was a pizza lunch, where all the pizza was donated by Langfords. Between those two events they raised about $500. They also set up a ‘tip jar’ where people could donate cash, and lastly was a bake sale they held on May 13, as the final effort to raise funds.
“I think its important to show that we’re a little school miles away from Ukraine, but we can still do something. We can still help and that’s important,” said Peterson.
One thing Peterson was proud of was that it was a whole school effort, and many of the students were involved in some capacity.
For the bake sale the students, along with Margaret Connolly who spearheaded it from organizing to portioning out the ingredients and overseeing everything, to doing all the baking in house. They also had support from Giant Tiger, which gave them a discount on the raw ingredients they needed. The list of goodies they baked included: chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, raisin oatmeal cookies, chocolate coconut hay stacks, mini oreo cheesecake, mini lemon raspberry cheesecake, chocolate brownies, date squares, pecan pie squares and cinnamon rolls.
“It’s quite an operation,” said Peterson.
People in the community were also able to preorder the baked goods, which all funneled through the fundraising efforts, and all the treats that were left over where then sold at the bake sale. “A lot of people paid for their order and then like added a couple of bucks and so people were very generous,” said Connolly.
“Certainly the idea was expressed about doing something for Ukraine because it’s in the news and then we talked about it as a whole student body and everyone was on board and that’s when I started getting recipes from some students and suggestions from other students,” said Connolly.
Preparations for the bake sale started at the beginning of the week with measuring and prepping ingredients. A day before the bake sale was when all hands were on deck and the students, along with Connolly, went into full gear and started baking.
“Probably one of the hottest days in the Pontiac and we had our ovens going all day so we started at eight and we went right through till three. I had my core gang and some coming in and out to help. It was extremely hot. Thank God for the cooling room,” she laughed.
For many students baking and learning basic life skills in the food biology class and making meals for the whole school was common, but with the pandemic that was put on pause. So for many this was a new experience.
“Baking is like magic, when you look and say how does flour, sugar, milk and yeast make that right. So it’s a good learning opportunity,” she said.
Connolly highlighted that it was important to do something because it allowed them to combat the feeling of helplessness. “When you feel that grateful for where we get to live, and you see that kind of trauma with normal people, everyday people in another part of the world, like, it’s a way to deal with the helplessness I guess. You’re feeling like what can we do? And this is something we can do,” she said.
The bake sale marked the culmination of six weeks of campaigning efforts, and by the end of it they had raised over $1,100 and this money will be used to provide humanitarian help to the victims of the Ukrainian war.
“Just help others when they need it,” said Gabrielle Graveline, one of the students.
