It is said that it takes a community to raise a child. Well, it also takes a community to raise funds to help children.
That was the case in May when local Tim Hortons outlets ran their Smile Cookie Campaign. The event brought in $69,000 for the Children’s Treatment Centre Foundation of Chatham-Kent (CTCFCK), and was helped by a team of 140 volunteers organized by the Foundation.
During the week of May 1-7, the Tim Hortons Smile Cookie Campaign supported 550 Canadian charities, hospitals and community programs.
Local Tim Hortons owners – the Pritchard family and Mike and Paula Grail – donated the proceeds from their various outlets in Chatham-Kent to support the CTC Foundation.
More than 140 volunteers from the community, including treatment centre staff and community members, assisted with baking and decorating Smile Cookies at the Chatham Armoury kitchen to augment the baking inside the Tim Hortons locations.
Throughout the course of the seven-day campaign, volunteers baked more than 25,000 cookies.
Funds raised from the Smile Cookie Campaign will go towards providing programming and therapy for children that attend the treatment centre. The CTC served more than 5,000 children in 2022, which equals to one in every five Chatham-Kent children.
Not all services at the Children’s Treatment Centre of Chatham-Kent are covered by government funding. Programs such as social work, therapeutic recreation services and music therapy are all funded by the CTC Foundation.
