The Plum Coulee Community Foundation (PCCF) is planning to mark its twentieth anniversary in conjunction with the 2022 Plum Fest, an annual community celebration that's also entering its 20th season.
The announcement was made at the foundation's annual general meeting held on May 26th.
Outgoing treasurer Moira Porte says one of the main anniversary projects involves Plum Coulee Youth in Philanthropy and a guitar named Voyageur that embodies countless stories of this diverse country.
"It's a steel string acoustic guitar built from a variety of pieces of artifacts collected from one side of the country to the other. There is some oak that was taken from the Saint Boniface Museum. There is some lucky stone in there from Gimli, and there's pieces of a church, called the Saint Michael's Orthodox Ukrainian Church in Gardenton."
As part of Plum Fest, people will be allowed to hold and play the guitar and be photographed with the unique instrument. The Foundation plans to erect a musical playground in downtown Plum Coulee in time for the summer festival from August 19th to 21st.
Six new board members were introduced at the meeting. Porte and five others will assume new roles for the organization.
"These new members are taking on some very positive roles with our foundation. Levi Taylor will be our new chair of the board, Rosella Janz will be our treasurer and finance chair, John Peters will be our grant chair, Kathy Dyck will be our strategic initiatives chair, and I will be the fund development chair."
Those members join board incumbents Alan Funk, June Letkeman, Archie Heinrichs and Heather Unger.
As one her final tasks as treasurer, Porte tabled a bright financial report for the organization.
"We have approximately $765,000 in assets with the Winnipeg Foundation, comprised of our Endowment Fund, our Museum Heritage Fund, our Elevator Maintenance Fund, and a new fund that we started last year called our Administrative Fund to ensure that we have enough money going forward to operate and hopefully one day be able to hire a full time executive director."
Porte reported that the foundation raised over $24,000 through the Giving Challenge, awarded over $14,000 in grants, and through Endow Manitoba was able to hire Linda Lambert for a five-year term to help navigate foundation-related by-laws.
