Playfair Daycare wins $25,000 in BASF Growing Home contest
May 7, 2025, 1:24 pm
Ryan Kiedrowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
It’s another step successful toward reaching a lofty fundraising goal for Moosomin’s Play Fair Daycare. Last week, the local group learned they had won first place in Saskatchewan through BASF’s Growing Home community investment program—gaining $25,000 for their efforts.
“It started by BASF reaching out to some of their customers and just saying, ‘hey, is there an organization in your community that you would like to nominate?’ And we had a handful of farmers reach out to us and say, ‘hey, this might be something that you guys might be interested in,’ ” explained Jill Jones, board chair with Play Fair Daycare. “We took a peek and said, ‘absolutely,’ they nominated us—which was amazing for them to think of us—and we were selected as one of the top three finalists for Saskatchewan.”
Nominations ran from Feb. 4 to March 3 across Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. A total of $160,000 in prize funding was up for grabs for the top three organizations in each province, with first place receiving $25,000, second place earning $10,000, and third place gaining $5,000.
“Growing Home with BASF is an incredible opportunity to support organizations that are the backbone of their rural communities,” said Leta LaRush, Vice President, Business Management at BASF Canada Agricultural Solutions. “We are excited to continue expanding this program and help strengthen Canadian farming communities.”
Then came the nail-biting portion of the campaign—the public voting component. From April 1 to 15, people cast their votes among the top three in each province, and Play Fair found themselves in a neck-and-neck race with another daycare from Wilkie.
“That was a hard fought battle, getting all the votes,” Jones said. “The Little Seedlings Daycare definitely gave us a run for our money! The BASF rep never told us exact numbers, but just going into that final day and just watching it myself and the little graph that they had, it was very close. All throughout that last day, we kind of kept bouncing between first and second with Little Seedlings Daycare.”
Ultimately, Play Fair Daycare claimed the top spot, and Little Seedlings was still able to benefit from $10,000 in funding dollars, announced on April 29.
Fundraising continues
The Play Fair Daycare has been a part of Moosomin since 1995, and began working on a second building after being granted 90 new daycare spaces in 2023. In total, the new building will cost $4.4 million.
“We’re doing good, slowly but surely,” described Jones of fundraising efforts. “We still have that $1.3 million that we received from the government, and to date we’ve probably been able to generate around $210,000 of fundraising in different ways. Including this BASF grant, we probably have another $150,000 committed to be received over the next couple years.”
One ongoing fundraiser the daycare has seen success with is the Trip of the Month, which has two more destination draws left.
“On May 9, we’re going to do a trip to Greece,” Jones said. “We are super excited to get that one given away, and hopefully it makes a couples’ day! June is the final one for a family trip to Disneyland, and we are also really excited to give that one away to a family in town.”
Also on tap for June 1 is the Anytime Fitness Gives Back Marathon, with proceeds benefitting Play Fair Daycare.
“They’ve got a few different options, you can do 3 km with your family, you can do a 5 km one, a 10 km one and they’re encouraging everybody,” Jones said. “Any way you want to move—on a bike, on a scooter, jogging or just walking. It will be a great event for everybody.”
There are various ways for people to help the daycare raise money for the new building or to pitch in as a volunteer, available at the playfairdaycare.com website.
“We definitely are very lucky to live in such a giving community,” Jones concluded.
