Stronger Together Community Potluck draws a 'beautiful, friendly crowd'

When you host a potluck, but you don't expect everyone to bring food, you know you've got a true sense of community.

Around 80 people from all walks of life attended the Stronger Together Community Potluck held on Saturday at Knox Hall in Weyburn.

One of the organizers, Robin Davison, said they had live music and activities for kids, and they'll be doing it again soon.

"It was a smashing success, so hopefully it will be the first of many here in Weyburn," she shared. "We had just enough food and there was a little bit of leftovers, so a few people got to take some food home."

Everybody got to eat, she noted, which worked out well since they had aimed to feed around 100 people. Around half of those who attended brought food to share.

"We got very lucky for our first attempt. We had a lot of volunteers that were bringing food, but we made sure to emphasize when we were advertising that it wasn't an obligation. It wasn't necessary for attendance because we didn't want anyone to stay home just because they couldn't contribute food to the meal. We wanted them to feel welcome as well."

Kids also got to enjoy the event, which included a sing-along, and Davison said she hopes more parents will bring their kids along next time. Two more potlucks have already been planned - for May 18th and June 22nd.

"We are planning to have face painter at our next event and we might also have some cotton candy," she invited. "Kids are tricky with food, so it's understandable that it might be stressful to bring kids to an event like that. But they're totally welcome. We set up a kids table and we had stickers and colouring books and play dough and the kids were building stuff and creating things, and I think it went really well."

She said, "It's so important to just connect with your fellow neighbors, your fellow human beings. It's crucial for growth. It's crucial for survival. It's crucial for happiness."

Davison pointed out that is why they advertised the event everyone welcome, whether they were bringing food or not, whether they were working class or not, whether they were new to Weyburn or have been here their whole life."

Overall, she said, it went great considering it was their first attempt at this kind of non-affiliated event.

"The whole meal went so smoothly. I think everybody enjoyed themselves and that was my goal. So I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I saw so many new faces and I met so many new people that I had only known from messages before, because I reached out to quite a few people about bringing food, some of them I know and some of them I've never met in person," she explained. "So it was a really good cross section of just all kinds of folks. We had church folks. We had non church folks. We had some people that were new to Weyburn and I thought it was just such a beautiful, friendly crowd. I thought it if we got really lucky, it was really good."