Moose Jaw Diversified Services is holding a Halloween Family Festival this weekend, which means you should prepare your best costume and carve your most ghoulish pumpkin.
The fundraiser takes place on Saturday, Oct. 29, from 1 to 5 p.m. at 11 Wood Lily Drive. The cost is $25 for a family of five, $6 per person, or free for kids under two; only cash is accepted.
Attendees can expect a haunted house, entertainment, a bouncy house, a concession booth/canteen featuring hot dogs, chips and drinks for $5, a costume contest for different ages, a pumpkin-carving contest — be sure to bring a gourd — at 4 p.m. and a baby crawl.
This is the first year that Diversified Services has held this event, but it wants to make it an annual fundraising initiative, explained Heather MacNeill, program director. The goal is to raise money for the organization’s therapy programs — which can be expensive — such as art, music and pets.
“(For example), art therapists are quite expensive, but they are certified … . So we are hoping to have someone come once a month — if not more, depending upon how much money we raise,” she said.
Diversified Services has been holding more and more fundraisers but wants to hold two large events — like a trade show — that generate a significant amount of money, MacNeill continued. This Halloween festival — the third in 2022 — is the last big fundraiser of the year.
“They’ve been pretty successful, but we’re kind of hoping for something larger,” she remarked. “A thousand dollars is great, but it would be nice to have a fundraiser so that we don’t have to keep having little fundraisers all year round because we have limited staff and limited volunteers.”
Moose Jaw Diversified Services has operated in the community for 55 years and has evolved over the decades with the programs it offers, MacNeill added. It used to have a contracted wood shop and sewing shop, but pre-pandemic, it decided to offer community and in-centre programs that were more person- and goal-centred for its clients.
For more information, call Moose Jaw Diversified Services at 306-692-4954.
