LIIDLII KUE/FORT SIMPSON
Headed by a group of women, including Tracy Waugh-Antoine, Allyson Skinner, Dahti Tsetso and Ashley Okrainec, a flash fundraiser in Fort Simpson raised $1,400 for aid to Aleppo, Syria as the holiday season approached last month.

Shaznay Waugh, left, and Courtney Tsetso spent the afternoon on Dec. 22 wrapping presents at the Fort Simpson recreation centre as part of a fundraiser for the Compassion Collective, which is sending humanitarian aid to Aleppo, Syria. - April Hudson/NNSL photo

Waugh-Antoine spearheaded the fundraiser, which took the form of a coffee house, after she saw a social media post on Facebook from the Compassion Collective, a group of authors in the United States who have been raising money for Syrian refugees.

"It was just before Christmas, I was feeling really stressed and worried - it just seemed like a heavy time of year," Waugh-Antoine said, adding the news she had been hearing about Aleppo had been weighing on her.

"I kept thinking, things are stressful but let's try to put it in perspective a little bit."

Within minutes of expressing her desire to participate in the Compassion Collective's fundraiser, Waugh-Antoine began receiving messages from other women in the village wanting to help as well. Eventually, the group settled on the idea of a coffee house, with gift-wrapping available.

"It was pretty amazing how it just fell together easily," Waugh-Antoine said.

"We went into it thinking, 'If we make more than any one of us could contribute individually at this time of year, then we've done something.' And it feels like a success."

The fundraiser drew a couple vendors and a steady stream of people to Fort Simpson's recreation centre on Dec. 22 for the event. Five of the community's youth - Shaznay Waugh, Zehro'h Waugh, Ava Erasmus and Cadence Erasmus - also spent their afternoon helping out, as well as Waugh-Antoine's six-year-old son, Charlie.

"(Cadence and Ava) were amazing - they pretty much ran the kitchen the whole time. I kept going back to the kitchen to make sure everything was OK, and they were on it," Waugh-Antoine said.

It's not the first time Waugh-Antoine has participated in a fundraiser led by the Compassion Collective. Last year, a different fundraiser piqued her interest when the organization asked for donations of no more than $15.

The Christmas coffee house was modelled after that, she said.

"The idea was, small amounts of money. It's Christmas, not everyone has a lot of money to spare. But if everybody puts $10 in and they get a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun, we've raised money and awareness," she said.

And although the fundraiser included a couple larger donations in the $100 range, as well as donations from the Northern Store and Unity Convenience Store, most of the donations were small.

"Mostly it was toonies, loonies, $5 bills, $10 bills," she said.

"It really added up. I was really shocked when we finally sat down and counted the money."

The cherry on top for Waugh-Antoine came later, though, after she completed the donation to the Compassion Collective and sent one of the group's founders, Glennon Doyle Martin, an e-mail explaining where the money was coming

from.

"I said, 'This is where this money is coming from, this is not coming from me personally,' and I sent a few pictures," she said.

"She wrote back within an hour, and (her response) was so heartfelt. She said, 'Your note made my heart burst with love.'"

While the group hopes to run more fundraisers in the future, Waugh-Antoine said they don't currently have any concrete plans.

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