A fundraiser at École Holy Cross School raised more than $3,000 to support medical needs for babies in Prince Albert and area.
École Holy Cross helped support the Malhotra Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Victoria Hospital through a fundraising week at the school in January. Principal Gisele Stalwick said they wanted to help those in need.
“We felt that we wanted to provide all our families the opportunity to have quality care from birth,” she said. “We also wanted this care to be provided in our community.”
“We think it’s important that our families who need access to the services provided from the NICU are available in our community so that we don’t have to have them travel as far away from home,” she added.
The NICU held the official grand opening in September, 2022. It will increase capacity to accommodate up to 11 medically fragile babies as well as having the latest technology, including isolation rooms and a room capable of accommodating twins.
The staff and students raised money by having a week-long fundraiser from Jan. 23-27. With the students donating money and an activity was planned for each day of the week.
The school has 309 students, and each student was asked to donate $10. Each fundraising day had a special theme, with Monday being hat and toque day, Tuesday being sock hop at lunch day, Wednesday being pajama day, Thursday being popcorn day, and Friday being bannock and jam day.
At the end of the week, the fundraising total was $3,145.00. Stalwick said the fundraiser far exceeded the school’s goals.
“It far surpassed our expectations,” she explained. “It was so good, we were so happy with the results we had no set idea of how much, we just knew that this was important to us and that we thought that it would be a good cause for us to support.”
The check was delivered to the Victoria Hospital on Thursday. The École Holy Cross Student Leadership Council co-presidents Mia Bisson and Emma Huet made the presentation on behalf of the school.
It was also a lesson in caring for the community, according to Stalwick.
“It was way better than I thought it would be,” she said. “We just wanted to talk to our kids about supporting your community and those kinds of things. It doesn’t always have to go back to our school, which is still important. We still do those (fundraisers), but we wanted to do something that was outside of the school and that is why we decided to do this.”
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
