Smile Cookie Week has wrapped up across Canada, and the results in Steinbach are nothing short of incredible.
Tim Hortons' annual campaign sold more than 24,500 cookies in the city, raising $49,092 for ROC (Recreation Opportunities for Children) Eastman, a local non-profit organization dedicated to reducing barriers to recreation for children and families across the Eastman region.
From April 28 to May 4, every dollar raised through Smile Cookie sales was donated directly to ROC, and the team is grateful to Tim’s for selecting them as this year’s recipient.
“They were phenomenal to work with,” says ROC Development Coordinator, Steph McLean. “They were so great. They had tables set up in the store, and we had volunteers at each location.”
All three Tim Hortons locations in Steinbach took part in the campaign, with ROC volunteers pitching in to help with the decorating.
“At the Esso location, we had a volunteer every morning, working in the kitchen, decorating cookies and then at the other two locations, we had two volunteers, every morning, every afternoon, and every evening decorating cookies and all of our volunteers signed up out of their own free will and their gift and time made it possible for this to happen.”
McLean says the funds will go a long way toward helping ROC achieve their goals.
“Right now, ROC has a wait list, so we do have families that have reached out or have been referred to us, and we don't have enough staff or enough resources to meet with all of those families. So, these funds give us the opportunity to expand our services and meet with new families. So that's a really huge one.”
ROC currently has two full-time staff members and six part-time or casual team members, which can make it challenging to reach all the communities they hope to serve.
“Our staff of eight serves the entire Eastman region. So that's the Ontario border, down to the US border, all the way to Highway 75, and we travel as north as Hollow Water First Nation.”
These funds will also go towards making it possible for staff to continue to meet families in their communities.
“A lot of the time in those more rural communities, we don't see traditional group team programming or facilitated programming, those don't exist. And ROC doesn't facilitate our own programs. We help families find existing programs or find new activities. So these funds make it possible, our staff goes, we meet a lot of the time, most of the time in the family's home, wherever they are, we brainstorm, we play games with the kids and the parents and figure out what kind of activities the kids are interested in.”
McLean thanks the Tim Horton’s staff for their behind-the-scenes work and the community for their support.
“I don't actually think that we have adequate words. We've done this before, so we knew that the fundraising potential was huge. We had no idea that it could be this big.”
She adds that a lot of people do not know that Tim’s covers the cost of the entire campaign.
“There's no upfront cost to any of the charities that participate. We just simply get asked to participate, and we are incredibly grateful because the local Tim Horton's here, their staff is absolutely amazing how they can handle and facilitate all of the orders. The bulk orders that came in, they had multiple bulk orders of 700 to 1000 cookies in one pickup from businesses or schools. And how they handled that was incredible.”
McLean says a highlight this year was that Tim Hortons had the cookie decorating done in the dining room of the restaurant this time around to allow the community to talk to volunteers and learn about ROC and what they do.
“ I think that's what encouraged a lot of people who maybe didn't even know really what smile cookie was about, it kind of gave a face to this whole campaign who our local charities are and really you could see the partnership between the Tim Horton's store and the charity which was we thought it was absolutely amazing. We were so thankful.”
She adds that ROC is incredibly appreciative of the support.
“We are really grateful. We are really excited to be able to put this money into tangible experiences for families. The impact of a $2 cookie purchase is pretty outstanding!”
