Saskatoon girl delivers for Tree of Plenty campaign

Baya Coutts, 5, delivered a whole grocery cart full of food to the Saskatoon Food Bank for its annual Tree of Plenty campaign.

A campaign launched more than two decades ago will again help feed Saskatoon’s hungry during the Christmas season.

The 23rd annual kickoff to the Saskatoon Food Bank’s Tree of Plenty Campaign was held Thursday with a special guest taking part in the kick off.

Baya Coutts is only five years old, but she delivered a whole grocery cart full of food after deciding to start campaigning for food bank donations so everyone could have a good meal during the Christmas season. She was inspired after watching high school students collect items for the food bank on Halloween.

She even wrote a letter and delivered it to friends and neighbours asking for their help to fill the Tree of Plenty.

"She was on a mission," said her mother, Merin Coutts. “We were going to go door-to-door, and we were going to ask for cookie dough. I was a bit baffled and I said, 'Well what are we going to do with this cookie dough Baya?' She said, 'Well we're going to give it to people who don't have any cookie dough.’ “

Organizers say it doesn't take much to make a big difference.

"The kinds of great, small acts that we can do for people across the community really can snowball,” said the food bank’s Laurie O'Connor, “and so what a wonderful little girl, just decided that if people weren't having enough food she was going to bang down doors and collect food for the food bank."

CTV Saskatoon has been a media partner of the Tree of Plenty campaign since it began more than two decades ago.

"It's a great project,” said David Fisher, vice-president and general manager of CTV Saskatchewan. “Sadly the need has never gone away. I'm just thrilled that after 23 years the campaign still has all the momentum, all the energy that it did when it started."