Grants reflect the heart of Saskatchewan

Every morning during the school year, Tina Edwards makes the 45-minute drive from her farm near Nokomis to Winston High School in Watrous. She opens her classroom and, importantly, the room she maintains for the Breakfast for Learning program that provides healthy snacks for kids looking for a little energy boost during the day.

“As a school division, one of our main goals is to create a safe and caring environment,” says Tina. “Having a breakfast room is one important way for us to do that. We have a lot of kids who can’t eat at seven a.m. and then ride a bumpy bus for an hour to get to school.

“We have a lot of athletes who arrive early in the morning for football or volleyball practice in the mornings. Sometimes kids stay after school because they have drama practice. The breakfast room is a place to have healthy food in a home atmosphere.”

Breakfast for Learning in Watrous is one of 65 community initiatives to receive a $2,500 grant as part of Nutrien’s “Building Stronger Communities Together” program. To celebrate our 65-year history in communities across Saskatchewan, Nutrien invited applications for grants to support programs that improve the lives of people in the areas where we operate.

The wide-reaching program is helping to feed students in small-town schools, construct local gathering places, and support organizations and events at the heart of our communities.

“We heard from many communities that small grants can have a big impact,” says Renee Glushyk, Senior Manager, Community Relations and Investment, Nutrien. “Our goal is to improve the communities where our people work and live and this program is a way to support our partners across the province.”

The timing was ideal for the Winston High School’s Breakfast for Learning program, which needed a new source of funding to remain operational.

“We really were scrambling,” says Tina. “Feeding kids is hard and an expensive thing to do. Over the years, Nutrien has always come through on big events like leadership conferences or funding jerseys for sports teams. The support for this is nice because the community values feeding kids and it tells us what we do here is important.”

Nutrien also provided a grant to the breakfast program and snack fridge at the LeRoy School. Students from kindergarten to Grade Twelve can find a quick, healthy snack on long days when they may be travelling from farms or surrounding towns.

“In rural areas, kids involved in extracurricular activities sometimes don’t have time in the morning to grab something healthy,” says Alicia Richels, who operates the program in LeRoy. “Sometimes they’re leaving their home at quarter to six in the morning to come in for a practice and they’re here for the rest of the day. If we can provide something at school on those days, it’s super important.”

Lanigan and Beyond

While Saskatchewan is geographically large, at its heart it is a collection of smaller communities working together.

As an example, the Lanigan potash facility employs more than 600 people from 77 different towns and cities across the province, including more than 350 workers from communities within 50 kilometres of the site. In addition to direct employment, the site works with 75 suppliers in the surrounding communities, spending more than $5.7 million goods and services with regional partners in 2024.

“All our mining operations are regional in nature,” says Rob Jackson, General Manager, Lanigan. “Over the past 65 years, we’ve built world-class operations with people from the local communities around our sites and they will continue to a be a part of our success going forward.”

To further the spirit of partnership, Nutrien’s grant program is providing support to diverse programs that help a growing community, including daycare facilities in LeRoy and Muenster.

“Getting the grant was massive for us,” says Jennifer Helmkey, treasurer of the Muenster Cooperative Childcare Centre, which is building a new facility with spaces for 45 kids that will open in March 2026. “It’s not just the size of the grant. It’s hard to find funding when people can’t see something right way. The Nutrien support was a big help to get us started.”

Similarly, the LeRoy Daycare, which also received a grant, is adding 70 spots to keep pace with demand in the community. The expansion will help growing families who are supporting a growing economy in the region.

“There is a lack of childcare in all the surrounding area,” says Chelsey Holt, director of the LeRoy Daycare, “so we’re seeing children from other communities come in when they can’t find care in their home communities – from Humboldt, Muenster, Englefeld, Saint Gregor. It helps the whole area.”

Supporting Safe, Healthy Communities

The Building Stronger Communities Together grants recognize that healthy communities – like healthy companies – are built by people making a long-term commitment to working together for a greater goal.

In Humboldt, another community closely tied to the Lanigan operation, one of the local priorities is research related to Type 1 diabetes (T1D). Data shows that the Humboldt area has a significantly higher rate of T1D cases than other parts of the province or the country, making the research effort important to many families in the community.

“We have more than 50 families on our email list that live within in an hour radius of Humboldt – from Bruno to Wadena to Melfort and Watrous,” says Cailin Hergott, a leader of the T1D activities in Humboldt. “It touches a lot of communities and a lot of different families.”

Hergott was diagnosed with T1D a little over 20 years ago. Her focus on fundraising for T1D research grew when her twin daughters were diagnosed with diabetes in 2016.

One of the biggest annual fundraisers is a “4x4x48” endurance run – four miles every four hours for 48 hours. This year’s event is expected to draw as many as 18 endurance runners; dozens of runners, walkers and cyclists; and more than 300 attendees to a fundraising dinner.

In addition to the grant, Nutrien is providing water along the running trail for the participants.

“The grant is huge for us,” says Cailin. “Every dollar makes a difference but it’s not just the grant that’s important. It’s the awareness. Having Nutrien’s support draws attention to what we’re doing and we’re very appreciative of that.”

It’s part of the collective effort that leads to building stronger communities – together.