Donors from Innisfail and Balzac pooled their resources to get a new playset for the Central Alberta Women’s Emergency Shelter.
A couple of kids eagerly watched from the shelter’s deck as a wooden playground system, with slide, swings, acrobatics bar, climbing wall and rope ladder, was boosted over the Red Deer shelter’s back fence by a crane from Rainbow Play Systems, a division of the Blue Grass Sod Farm in Balzac.
The special delivery was made possible by a lot of bottle drives, hotdog sales and raffles by an Innisfail hospital group — as well as some matching altruism by a Rainbow Play Systems manager.
The fundraising project started when members of an Innisfail hospital donor group noticed, while delivering presents for the women and children last Christmas, that the shelter’s previous playset was showing its age and missing some swings.
The “women helping women” group of the hospital’s long-term care and support staff decided to take up the challenge of getting a new playset for the shelter, as a legacy project. Group member Gayle Rieder said about $2,300 was raised for the project.
When the group approached Steve Neubauer, manager at Rainbow Play Systems in Balzac, to see if what they could buy, Neubauer ended up donating a much more expensive floor model to their good cause.
The donors said they all know of somebody who was in an abusive situation and needed help. “This could happen to any of us, any of our families,” said Innisfail group member Linda Parliament.
Rieder added “We wanted to bring some smiles to some kids,” and to let their moms know “we’re rooting for them, and that there’s hope.”
Neubauer had donated to other kids charities, and felt this was another great cause. “It’s all about making things happier for the kids and getting them outdoors.”
Shelter staff are thrilled by the gift. Heather Pitt, the operations manager, said about 300 kids come to the shelter annually with their mothers — that’s equal to the number of women who stay at the shelter each year to get away from an abusive situation.
“The kids are going to absolutely love it,” Pitt said, as the playset was being assembled.
lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com
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