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Chunky Monkey sales return

YWCA brings back tasty fundraiser

-Submitted photo
The YWCA of Fort Dodge's Chunky Monkey snack mix includes chips, pretzels, popcorn, Snickers and caramel. The snack mix will go on sale next week.

The YWCA of Fort Dodge’s popular snack mix “Chunky Monkey” is returning next week.

The YWCA sells bags and tins of the snack mix every holiday season as a fundraiser for its transition fund, according to Clinical Director Nici George.

‘We want to have the women in our program be productive members of society,” George said. “So they need IDs to work, they need birth certificates to work, and they need Social Security cards. So we pay for them if they have no way to pay for those.”

The YWCA also uses the transition fund to purchase bus tokens and taxi vouchers for its clients.

The fundraiser was started several years ago, George said.

“We had a very motivated counselor here in the past — she was a go-getter and loved doing all this stuff,” she said. “So she came up with the idea and she had a recipe.”

The indulgent snack mix is a combination of salty and sweet — popcorn, chips, pretzels, Snickers and caramel.

Sales for the Chunky Monkey mix will start on Wednesday, and likely continue through the end of December, George said. A bag is $5 and a tin of Chunky Monkey is $25. They can accept cash, checks or PayPal.

“Because of COVID, we started doing a drive-up last year,” she said.

For up-to-date information for sale hours, see the YWCA’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/YWCA-of-Fort-Dodge-311340435664748.

Over the next few weeks, staff and clients will work together to make the snack mixes to sell.

“(The clients) participate in it because they’re going to be the ones that utilize (the profits),” George said.

In addition to helping with covering the costs of new IDs and other materials, the transition fund is also used to pay for the occasional off-site activity, where staff take the substance abuse treatment residents to a park or somewhere for some fun activities.

“It’s just the small things in life that we show them that you can still have fun without drinking or using drugs,” George said.

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