By Medicine Hat News on March 20, 2020.
The local public charter school is moving forward with its spring fundraiser, despite not being able to do so face-to-face. The Centre for Academic and Personal Excellence is selling orders from Mom’s Pantry, a Winnipeg-based food fundraising service, with the school earning anywhere from 20 to 40 per cent on sales, depending on the particular item. The fundraiser was planned long before the COVID-19 crisis, but all the foods are frozen which could prove valuable to families in self-isolation. “We had just rolled out this fundraiser the previous week and we sent home a little catalogue and an order form to all of our families in our school. A lot of our families would return their paper order copy of their form with their payments,” explained Joleine Hartman, CAPE’s fundraising co-ordinator. “Because you can also order online, we are encouraging all of our families and whoever wants to place their orders online instead of using the paper order form.” CAPE may be out of school indefinitely, but Hartman says they will need funds for when classes eventually return. “We might not be back until September, but we don’t know that. Either way, we still need to keep raising money for our different programs, so that we can keep all those things in place,” she said, citing new gym equipment, books and learning software, such as Accelerated Reader and Accelerated Math. “The fundraising never stops.” 9