Dear Editor:
First, I would like to introduce you to what Girl Guides of Canada-Guides du Canada means to me. The following is taken from the Girl Guides of Canada national website:
The Girl Guide Vision: Girl Guides of Canada-Guides du Canada, the organization of choice for girls and women, makes a positive difference in the life of every girl and woman who experiences Guiding so she can contribute responsibly to her communities.
I enjoy being a part of this organization so much that together with the other leaders in the Parkland Prairie District (Yorkton) we want to provide an opportunity for the older girls to take an international trip where they will do some community service projects, learn about different currencies and traditions, and hopefully meet some guiding units in other countries.
In order to make this happen we have been working hard at many different fundraising activities, such as gift-wrapping over Christmas, a coat check and canteen on New Year's Eve, several raffle baskets, a steak night, cookie sales, a tradeshow, a raffle for a quad which is going on right now, and bottle drives. The young ladies are doing this work themselves alongside of the leaders in order to earn the funds needed to pay for this trip. We would like to take this opportunity to let you know how much we appreciate the support we have received from everyone in our efforts, by coming out and supporting us you are helping make a difference for these young ladies by opening up their experience in guiding which they in turn will provide to the next generation. We have purchased a cotton candy machine and popcorn machine so we can supplement the fundraising activities as well. Did I mention we have cookies for sale as well?
This past weekend, May 5, the Parkland Prairie Extra Ops unit did a bottle drive throughout Yorkton. We had many girls going door to door to collect donations of bottles and some in pick-up trucks with their parents collecting from curbside donations that we were made aware of. We had yet more girls sorting and removing caps from bottles and bagging these bottles at one of our leader's homes. We had her whole back yard filled with piles of sorted bottles and cans and ended up with quite a pile of sorted bags after approximately 4 hours of sorting and bagging these bottles. Monday morning this guider was quite shocked to find that someone had come into her fenced in back yard during the night and stolen what appears to be at least 2 truckloads of the bottles these girls worked for on Sunday. What a sad day it is to have to tell the girls that their money-raising efforts are reduced because someone else found it necessary to take their hard work and profit from it themselves. While this is hurtful for us, we are even more determined to work towards making our goal and encourage the businesses in Yorkton and area to contact us for Grand Openings and Customer Appreciation Days where we can bring in our cotton candy machine or popcorn machine or even to have a hot dog/hamburger sale.
Thank you for your past support and we look forward to our future fundraisers in Yorkton. Despite the bad experience with this bottle drive, we will be doing another bottle drive come September, so save up your summer bottles and we will gladly take them off your hands!
If you would like to contact us, please feel free to call Barb Pohozoff at 306-621-1076 or Jacquie Schmidt 306-783-5391.
