The community in the District of Houston and beyond, came together after hearing about the break-in at the Beanstalk Childcare Centre and helped raise more money than expected.
Just before Halloween, someone broke into the Beanstalk Childcare Centre’s recyclables and stole what they had gathered in October. Following the incident, the centre extended their collection of recyclables into this month and they have already raised more money than usual.
“Community members heard about that and then we received cash donations, we received bottle donations and we have now actually exceeded our expectations of the fundraiser,” said Deborah Vrolyk of the centre.
In a Facebook post, Vrolyk said, “Our amazing daycare has been collecting bottles for a month as a fundraiser for our programs to buy new toys. We used our locked yard to store the bottles, and someone pried open the gate and stole our donations! I am shocked and upset that someone would break into a daycare and steal from children. If anyone has bottles or cans to donate to help us replenish our lost funds, let me know!”
People from the community and some even from outside, reached out to the centre and responded to Vrolyk’s Facebook post with various messages of support right from offering to drop off their bottles to offering to donate cash.
“I don’t have any bottles plus I live sorta far if I did.. but I would love to E transfer a little donation,” said one comment.
The centre had been considering a bottle drive but because of the COVID-19 pandemic asked people to drop off recyclable donations for the month of October.
“We are just really overwhelmed by the community support. People that have no connection with the daycare have also donated truckloads of bottles, some people brought in a bag or two of bottles, some people donated cash, and a lot of our daycare parents contributed as well,” said Vrolyk.
The community has pitched-in in the past as well. Last year in July, when the centre’s wagon was stolen from their yard, Motion Canada’s Brad donated a brand new wagon. The wooden gates for the centre have also been damaged and vandalized in the past.
The centre has now received a grant from the Dungate Community Forest to install security cameras. Until those are in place however, they have been taking them as they come and not storing them here so there isn’t any risk of getting stolen again.
With files from Rod Link