The spring Smile Cookie campaign will bring much more than smiles and sweet treats to its beneficiaries.
The Tim Hortons run initiative ran from April 28 to May 4.
Restaurants in Tilbury, Ridgetown, Blenheim, and Thamesville gave the proceeds of the cookie sales to the Victorian Order of Nurses' Ontario Student Nutrition Program (OSNP).
OSNP received $33,371 from the week-long campaign, which will benefit 42 schools across the municipality.
The program coordinator said that the money will help ensure that Chatham-Kent students are well-nourished and ready to learn.
Stores in Chatham, Wallaceburg, and Dresden donated proceeds of the campaign to CK's Children's Treatment Centre Foundation (CTCF).
CTCF President Mike Genge said that the partnership between the Foundation and the area stores has been going strong for at least 11 years.
"This year we did more than we've ever done," Genge shared. "In the 10 years that I've been at the Children's Treatment Centre and [partnered] with Tim Hortons and Smile Cookie, we've gone from about $16,000 to $67,000."
The total CTCF raised during this campaign is $67,986.
Genge credits the incredible growth in donations to more than 100 volunteers who helped bake and decorate cookies alongside Tim Hortons staff, making sure the local restaurants never ran out.
"The week of Smile Cookie, the Children's Treatment Centre has a group of volunteers who come in and we baked off 18,000 cookies that we delivered to the stores to supplement their cookie supply," he explained. Adding that it amounted to an extra $36,000 worth of cookies.
Genge said that the volunteers worked three-hour shifts starting on the Sunday before the campaign started through to the Thursday. He said that the volunteer program, baking the extra cookies started three years ago.
"Three years ago, I was talking to the Pritchard and the Grail families, who own the stores in Chatham, Wallaceburg, and Dresden, and we talked about how [CTCF] could help supplement the cookies, how we could make more cookies, so we could sell more cookies, and I came up with this idea of using the Commissary at the Chatham Armouries," Genge said. "We've been doing that for the last three years and it's worked out absolutely fantastic."
Volunteers come from all over Chatham-Kent, including realtor groups, firefighters, and church groups.
Genge explained that all the money raised will go toward Children's Treatment Centre programs that don't get funding from the province.
This includes social work programs, recreational therapy programs, music programs, a summer sailing program on Rondeau Bay, and other sports programs.