PELLY — A barbecue to raise money for a new playground in Pelly was hosted by a local non-profit.
The event was held on May 24.
“We’re close to the end now,” said Elie Lussier, Friends of Pelly chair. They have been officially fundraising since 2021 for a new playground in Pelly. “When the school shut down, they sold off the playground equipment, so that left the village and the surrounding community with no playground, no place to take the kids.”
“Mary Taylor, the owner of the Canadian Tire Store [in Yorkton], has been very generous to us,” Lussier said. “Last year we raised just under $20,000 with her help”. Taylor donated a “beautiful patio set” that they are currently raffling off. Raffle tickets were on sale at the barbecue.
“We’ve designed it so that the playground for the younger children is separate from the space for the teenagers, just like they would do in a school that went from kindergarten to Grade 12”.
Friends of Pelly aims to have the project ready for Canada Day.
“We had a much bigger vision, but we could not raise the money, prices just kept going up and we were chasing it,” remarked Lussier. “Unfortunately, we had to make some decisions that were tough. But we had to bite the bullet and say ‘before these kids are teenagers, we need to give them a park.’ So that’s what we did.”
