Get your tickets to the Festival of Trees and help support a great cause

 

The Allan & Jean Millar Centre is filled with beautifully decorated trees right now as the Boys & Girls Club of Whitecourt and District is using the hallway that leads to the pool change rooms as the staging area for its Festival of Trees. The fundraiser features fully decorated trees that are donated from local businesses. The event has been done for quite a few years in the past by Whitecourt Care and was taken over by the club in 2016. Last year, they were unable to put it on but this year they are back and ready to make it better than ever.

“We’re hoping to make this our event going forward. We put out 215 donation letters to businesses in our community with the goal of receiving 20 trees and we ended up receiving 17. We were really close to our goal which was exciting. Our ticket goal is to sell 1,000 at $10 each and, hopefully, raise $10,000 for our club. We know it’s a little ambitious but we’re going to maintain that goal until we can hit it whether that be this year or a couple of years from now,” explained club executive director Kyria Baranowski.

Roughly 60 per cent of the Boys & Girls Club’s money comes in the form of grants which can be scary when you consider that grants are never a guarantee. “When we are able to do fundraisers like this it is a huge help. Grants are quick to cover programming, supplies, and things like that but when it comes to things like transportation and food, which are two things we use a lot of in the summer and throughout the school year, we are on our own so fundraisers help us cover that.”

Tickets for the fundraiser can be purchased anytime at the AJMC front desk or at the Boys & Girls Club in the Carlan Community Resource Centre. Club representatives will also be set up at IGA on Fridays from 4 to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. up until the draw date of December 15. If you are lucky enough to win but already have a tree you can donate it back and help make someone’s Christmas very special. “We will co-ordinate with the food bank and Wellspring and we give that tree to a family in need that is otherwise unable to have a tree for the holiday season.”

The draw will take place at the Tim Hortons Community Fun Night at the AJMC on December 15. “A lot of people are familiar with our West Jet Tree which we just drew for last week. A thousand tickets for $10 each and there’s one winner. The cool thing with the Festival of Trees is that because there are 17 trees on display there will be 17 winners,” said Baranowski with a big smile.

The trees vary in size, colour, and décor. A couple feature handmade ornaments including the ones from Spruce View Lodge and Reschke Fritz LLP Chartered Professional Accountants. Some of the trees even feature added gifts including roughly a year’s supply of toothbrushes for the family under the Family Dental Health tree, gift cards, or candy on the Pharmasave Trees (they did three!), at least $100 worth of animal treats on the Global Pet Foods tree, and the Bruce Willis ultimate Die Hard tree from AECOM that features themed ornaments and POP Vinyl Toys.

There are also trees with wrapped presents underneath to add to the excitement. With added prizes or not, each tree is decorated beautifully and would make a sweet prize. There is even an Oscar the Grouch tree! Each ticket purchased is put towards one tree of your choice and each tree will be drawn from the tickets purchased specifically for it. You can buy as many tickets as you want for as many trees as you want. Winners will receive not only the tree but everything on it and under it.

Including the ones already mentioned above there are trees from Whitecourt Stationery, E2 Escape Entertainment, Whitecourt Communications, Stratty Enterprises, RBC, The Orchard Café, C4 Pivotal Bookkeeping, Curl Up and Dye, Mama Gray’s Kitchen, and Sew Right Whitecourt. To keep up to date with the fundraiser and to see daily closeups of the trees follow the Boys & Girls Club of Whitecourt & District Facebook page.