LAC LA BICHE - About two dozen Lac La Biche and area organizations and service groups will split more than $40,000 in funds raised at last November's Festival of Trees event.
It's took a couple of months for volunteers to tabulate the funds, but the cheques were issued last week — and the belated Christmas gifts were well-received, says Pat Boon-Anderson, one of the festival's founding organizers.
"We had a total of just of $43,400 given out to the community groups," said Boon-Anderson after last week's official funding distribution.
The annual Festival of Trees event has been running for the last 10 years and features a pre-Christmas weekend of activities, events, craft fairs and family-themed fun. The highlight of the weekend is the namesake raffle that transforms the Bold Center's Community Room into a twinkling forest of decorated Christmas trees. The most recent version of the event saw 55 trees donated by local businesses, individuals and organizations. The trees were decorated with prizes and presents. Organizers sold 40,000 tickets at this year's festival raffle.
Despite COVID-19 pandemic regulations that restricted occupancy at the event and caused the cancellation of some activities like children's games and food concessions, Boon-Anderson was pleased with the community support.
Fund raised from the raffle and donations go towards group who help to volunteer at the weekend event and local agencies and associations in need of funding.
This year, the Kids Are Worth It food program received a $10,000 donation and the Light Of Christ Catholic School's playground fundraiser received $15,000. A dozen local groups that helped to sell the Festival of Trees raffle tickets received $1,000 each, and five local groups that provided volunteers for the weekend event split $2,500. Funds were also given to the local Santa's Helpers group, the Waskaysoo Food Bank and the Lakeland Out of the Elements Shelter, with each splitting the $900 raised over the weekend in community donations.
Over the years, more than $200,000 has been given back to community groups from the event's proceeds.
