Board game fundraiser donates $85,000 to help stop food insecurity in Regina

A board game fundraising organization has donated over $85,000 to Carmichael Outreach in Regina. (Sierra D'Souza Butts / CTV News)

Play with Your Food (PwYF) has raised over $85,000 for Carmichael Outreach in support of stopping food insecurity and homelessness in the City of Regina.

Within a year, the community organization had 120 participants across Saskatchewan fundraise independently – by hosting board game events - to help reach the goal of donating $60,000 to Carmichael Outreach.

“To see the grand total at what it was, it was phenomenal. It was so heartfelt for everybody that needs it,” expressed Chrysta Garner, development coordinator of Carmichael Outreach.

The non-profit centre offers a variety of programs and services to people living on the street in Regina.

Garner said receiving the donation will help ensure the shelter’s programs are “topped up” by filling any gaps due to the lack of funding.

“We’re serving about 250 to 300 people per lunch. Over the course of a day you could see anywhere between 500 to 600 people just coming through the doors,” she explained referring to how busy the shelter is.

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“Whether it be coming in for a service or a program, or just coming in to get a place to eat or a place to sit down, whatever it may be. [This donation] is going to help everybody that comes in because there is no barrier to what we do.”

PwYF’s chair, Chelsea Low, shared the reason behind why the organization decided to fundraise for the centre.

“Carmichael Outreach’s values just completely align with ours,” said Low.

“They’re fighting food insecurity, they’re fighting poverty, they’re fighting homelessness and we thought let’s game for goodness, let’s do good things in our community and have fun while we’re doing it to help those who aren’t having as much fun.”

Since 2013, the board game fundraising campaign has raised over $400,000 for local charities in Regina.

“How we do that is people register through teams and host micro fundraising events throughout the year,” Low explained.

“We have things like bird food walks and tea tastings, or we play Settlers of Catan or we have crib tournaments or Kaiser, crokinole, lots of variety. There’s lots of fun stuff to get involved in for the public too.”