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People with cans and bottles stockpiling in kitchens, garages and backyards are finding a charitable way to get rid of them ahead of SARCAN’s June 15th opening.
KidSport teamed up with Airline Hotels on Saturday to organize a drive-through, contactless bottle drive at the Travelodge parking lot, hoping those bottles can get a few more kids into organized sports this year.
Brendon Lee, the chair of KidSport Saskatoon said capitalizing on a three-month stockpile of recyclables around the city could help bridge fundraising gaps due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“May is KidSport month and we’ve had to cancel most of our fundraising events,” he said. “We’re kind of feeling it ourselves, so it was really kind of a shot in the arm we needed.”
Lynn Flury, the corporate director of marketing with Airline Hotels, said the event is the perfect way to find a safe way to help the community during the COVID-19 pandemic all while making use of the largely vacant parking lot.
“We were just looking for something positive we could do for the community,” she said. “We all have cans and bottles and various things piling up in our garages and such – it’s just a positive thing we wanted to do.”
Less than an hour into the bottle drive, recyclables began filling the sea can containers on-site. (Keenan Sorokan/650 CKOM)
All donors will get a $20 gift certificate to use at the hotel for stopping by.
Darlene Bohun heard of the bottle drive on Friday, took one look at her growing pile of cans and was quick to find them a new home.
“I have one particular space for (recyclables) and the space was growing into other areas,” she said of her willingness to get them out of her home. “When I saw it was going to KidSport I thought, ‘That’s great. Then I know it’s going to good use.”
KidSport, which provides financial assistance to kids to participate in organized sports, is hoping the bottle drive can help offset all the losses and lack of fundraising in 2020.
Lee said last year the organization raised just under $500,000 in Saskatoon last year. That goal is unrealistic this year, but every bottle helps nonetheless.
With organized sports halted amid the pandemic and most kid-related activities left out of the province’s reopening plans, Lee said the pandemic is showing other kids what low-income families face at registration every year.
“Now all other kids are getting a glimpse of what it means not to be able to participate in sports, and you can see it just hurts kids,” Lee said. “You can see it just hurt kids. It’s a great opportunity to come out of this with some funding and be able to fill those gaps.”