Many hands make light work and today we are grateful to our fellow Rotarians and the many volunteers and support from local businesses that has helped to make the accessible playground at Margaret 'Ma' Murray Community School a reality.
Work is being completed this week and next, and we look forward to a grand opening with students and teachers in the new school year!
Fort St. John Rotarians started the fundraising for this important project in 2018 when Raj Acharjee came up with the idea to host a Bollywood event 💃🕺 Not only did Raj want to hold an event that would showcase his culture, but he also wanted to raise money to benefit local kids in an inclusive way. Bollywood was such a success that we started with seed money of $10,305.04!
We explored many avenues before we settled on the Ma Murray playground, and joined forces with the school PAC to find the funding to build an inclusive playground for not just the school, but for the community at large.
Our vision was to have large corporations that operate in our community to contribute to this project through their community grants. We applied to more than 40 different corporations between 2019 and 2020, which helped raise $33,000 from the following companies:
- Pembina - $10,000
- FSJ Co-op - $5,000
- TC Energy - $5,000
- Canfor - $5,000
- Shell $5,000
- Enbridge - $2,000
- Walmart - $1,000
We also used $20,174.09 from Rotary Mega Lottery proceeds from 2018-19 and 2019-20, and leveraged matching grants from Rotary International District 5370 for another $6,575. In total, the Fort St. John Rotary Club raised $70,054.13 for this very worthy project to engage all children in playing outside.