Kindness campaign another sugary-sweet success

to the Lloydminster Rescue Squad, the Lloydminster Public Library, the Lloydminster Interval Home Society, Furbabies Furever Homes, the SPCA, as well as Points West Living Lloydminster Inc.

“The campaign was fantastic, and it went by so quickly,” said Michelle Rusteika.

couldn’t have come at a better time.

what the campaign was about,” she said.

It was a pretty sweet month at Mother Teresa Early Childhood Education Centre as students helped sprinkle kindness throughout the community.

The school just wrapped up its secondannual donut campaign in partnership with

Sobeys Lloydminster and brought in $11,160.

Half of the funds went back to the school to cover costs, and the other half was split between the Lloydminster Rescue Squad, Border Paws Animal Shelter, formerly known as the SPCA, Furbabies, Big Brothers Big Sisters, KidSport, and the

Goat’s Christmas Wish.

The donut campaign was the brainchild of Grade 1 teacher Paige Kindopp, who pitched it to Michelle and Kevin Rusteika at Sobeys.

The Rusteikas then brought the studentdesigned donuts to life. Funds from last year’s campaign, which totalled $3,422.50, went

“The campaign was three weeks long and we hit our original target of $7,000 on week two, so at that point, we decided to go for broke and upped it to $10K, and here we are after the campaign at over $11K.”

With another successful campaign in the books, Rusteika is looking forward to a bit of a break after dipping over 8,000 donuts.

Kaley McLeod, chair of Lloydminster KidSport, said the donation

“Right now our funding requests are up, potentially higher than they’ve ever been, so we’ve increased our grant limit slightly to help accommodate the rising costs, inflation, all those things we’re all trying to navigate, so it’s going to make possible for more kids to participate in sport,” she said.

For Kindopp, this year’s campaign was even more special after a local community organization fair was held on prior to the fundraiser kickoff.

“Our process was similar with how students were engaged in the project and the designing process, however, this year we started with the local organization fair to make sure parents fully knew

“We brought a little more awareness to the reason why we were doing this, but it also got the students more familiar with those local organizations.

“I think they had more of an in-depth idea of why we were doing this.”

Only in its second year, Kindopp explained a lot more marketing went into this year’s campaign to help get the word out.

“We ended up getting some hockey teams in to challenge each other as well as some businesses challenging one another,” she said. “Then it just kind of took off and was truly incredible watching the community helping others, especially when the kids came in from the hockey teams.”