On Christmas Eve in Saskatoon, Maizie Bowkowy jets around the room of a large holiday party. One moment the 15-year-old is seen handing out a gift, the next, taking a picture with a guest.
And it makes sense: Bowkowy is the one of the party’s hosts. However, many of the hundreds in attendance are people she’s meeting for the first time.
“I like the feeling of giving things,” Bowkowy said during a brief break from shaking hands and making announcements over the speaker system.
“Christmas is just the time to give.”
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Bowkowy and roughly 60 other Martensville, Sask., area youth held the party to spread cheer to Saskatoon’s less fortunate families. They gathered more than 900 gifts and around 650 food hampers over the past month and distributed them to all who showed up.
“It makes me happy just to see how many people came and just seeing all the smiles on everyone’s faces,” Bowkowy said.
The group has been working on the party since last month. They went on numerous donation drives and received gifts from a number of local businesses.
“We just got together with some friends and decided to make a difference and give back a little bit this Christmas,” Katie Jankoski, one of the group’s members, said at the event.
“We‘ve received so much support and I’ve always known we have a good community, but they’ve really brought it out and shown us this Christmas by donating.”
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Group members said the goal was to target the less fortunate youth in Saskatoon, however there were residents of all ages in attendance Saturday, including Carl Trotchie, who took in the festivities with his two sons.
“The holidays are about this,” Trotchie said.
“Bringing everybody together as a family and a big group like this, it brings joy to everybody.”
Both Bowkowy and Jankowski said the group intends to make the Christmas Eve celebration an annual event.
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