Students from the North Battleford Comprehensive High School’s Commercial Cooking class had a special presentation for the Canadian Mental Health Association on Tuesday morning.
They presented Jane Zielke de Montbrun of CMHA with a cheque for $1,200. Rob Rongve, an active supporter of CMHA who has been involved in their building campaign, agreed to match that donation to bring the overall contribution to $2,400.
The donation goes to CMHA’s building fund campaign. The money was raised at the Taste of Food event hosted by NBCHS last week, where family, friends and school staff were invited to taste the appetizers, entrees, and desserts that the students prepared.
A total of 87 students participated, with money raised from tickets sold for the event.
“Everyone would comment about just the excitement of people excited about what they made, and people coming back for seconds,” said Janice Staff, commercial cooking teacher. “It’s a big deal, because you need to feed 250 people.”
As for the donation, Zielke de Montbrun was grateful the commercial cooking students chose them for their contribution.
“It’s very unexpected and a surprise,” she said, adding, “supporting mental health is becoming more and more important all the time, because people are having more mental health issues and mental health problems.”
CMHA’s new building fund campaign is already in its final stages, having raised $375,000 towards their $600,000 goal.
The money goes towards the renovations at the old Lion’s Den building in North Battleford, which CMHA has purchased to be its new home. Much of that work is complete and CMHA moved into its new location at the end of April.
The hope is for their building campaign to reach its goal by the end of June. An event is in the works for June called the Garden Party, where they hope to announce they have met their target.
