By Vivian Collings
It’s time for the third-annual fundraiser between Interact, Rotaract, and the Haliburton and Minden Rotary clubs to brighten the Highlands with a Canadian-themed colouring book, and they need your drawings to make it come to life.
Spearheaded by Haliburton Highlands Secondary School Interact students, the three service clubs under the umbrella of Rotary International have been supporting a school in India called the Mahatma Gandhi Siksha Sadan School by sending proceeds from their annual fundraiser to help provide much-needed supplies.
“When Interact was coming up with a world-wide initiative to tackle for this year, we decided that we wanted to support the school in India again as we have developed a friendship with them, they continue to be in great need, and we can help,” said Interact member Annabelle Borgdorff.
The HHSS student said the club’s dream is to one day meet the students at the school in India, but in the meantime, they hope to send monetary support across the water by putting together a colouring book to be sold.
Along with students’ drawings, they would like community members to submit drawings of Canadian-themed artwork to be part of the book.
“We just thought [the colouring books] would be a creative, new way to fundraise and to showcase local talent,” Annabelle said.
The clubs saw success with selling a cookbook of favourite recipes from members of all three clubs the first year and two different puzzles the second year; one featuring local scenery and one of a mural in the high school.
“We are holding a contest where people can submit their Canadian-themed artwork to be put in the adult colouring book that will be produced and sold to fundraise for the school in India. We are hoping to have involvement from students at HHSS, adults in the community, as well as students in Grade 8 from our family of schools,” Annabelle said.
To enter the contest, submissions must be black line drawings on 8.5” by 11” white paper, and they must be Canadian-themed. Digital drawing are accepted.
All submissions can be dropped off in-person at the HHSS main office or sent to christine.carr@tldsb.on.ca.
Name and contact information must be included, and the date for final submissions is April 6.
“We plan to have the colouring books fully put together by early May,” Annabelle said.