WILLOW BUNCH MUSEUM & HERITAGE SOCIETY INC

Our museum is open 7 days a week from May 15 to September 15. Our museum board consists of 7 members who volunteer on a regular basis for cleaning upgrading displays fundraising cultural events archival research and inventory digitization of artifacts into an excel database program. To alleviate the volunteer hours of our board members our museum has created a full-time seasonal Museum Coordinator to oversee the museum and summer employees during our open season. We also hire 1 to 2 summer workers each year depending on grants and applicant interests. An estimated 2000 volunteer hours is spent annually at the museum. We are housed in a heritage building formally known as the Sacred Heart Convent built in 1914. We have 10 theme rooms such as the Willow Bunch Giant 'Edouard Beaupré a First Inhabitants room and a School room. We also have an archive room used for genealogy research and framed photos of Willow Bunch first pioneers past local businesses and family photo flip charts. Fundraisers and cultural events are done on an annual basis.

We invited several schools in our area to visit the museum and had 5 school tours from Grades 5 to Grade 12 and 2 were requested in French where we have a volunteer from the community who comes and helps us with these tours in June this year. We celebrate Canada Day July 1st annually along with a barbeque fundraiser we had over 175 people attend. One of the local organizations planned their activity on the same day so they could participate in our BBQ. Canada Day souvenirs were handed out as well as door prizes . We had an open house of the museum puppet show face painting and games for the children. Scavenger hunts for all ages and cupcakes was served to the visitors. This year we joined with our Metis Local Organization to participate in Culture days honoring Truth & Reconciliation Day. We served baked and fried tacos to those in attendance and had a speaker talk about the residential schools which is always hard to hear. For fundraisers we raffle off tickets for a wood art piece we continue with our community calendar fundraiser. This year to help keep up with the increased costs for wages and operation of the museum we started a monthly Bingo. Our gift shop is growing with new souvenirs added each year to help promote sales.