December 7, 2016 Event Recap

Our final event for 2016 was held back at the Valley Ridge Golf Course. We were so fortunate to have them host our first and last event of 2016. A special guest, Farley the Fox, the mascot of the Calgary Hitmen joined us for the event. He received a lot of love from our kid members and stayed for the whole event.

We were so blessed to have Tanya Koshowski from Brown Bagging for Calgary’s Kids join us. Tanya’s message was very personalized as she interacted with the kids, asking them questions and helping them to understand what an impact they made on hungry kids in Calgary. Every $1 raised actually provides 1 lunch for a hungry kid in our city, so 100 Kids Who Care Calgary was able to feed 1,225 kids, WOW! Thank you so much to Tanya for coming to share with us!

The following charities were nominated before the event:

Calgary Flames Foundation ~ Fur-ever Homes ~ Children’s Wish Foundation ~ The Magic of Christmas ~ Highbanks Society ~ Ronald McDonald House ~ Opening Gaits Therapeutic Horse Riding ~ Joy Socks ~ NorthernStar Mothers Milk Bank

**Remember that if your charity didn’t win the vote you are still able to nominate them again at the next meeting. And more than one child can nominate the same charity. (that just means more chances for that charity to be chosen)

The three chosen charities for the evening were:

  1. Children’s Wish Foundation – Leah & Jemma Barnard spoke. Leah is 9 years old and Jemma is 8 years old. Thank you for being so brave to come up and share with us, its not easy to be called on first, especially when it was your very first meeting! Children’s Wish Foundation has been making wishes happen for 30 years for children between the ages of 3-17 that have been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. They have never had to say “no” to a wish and the wishes range from family vacations to meeting princesses, favourite musicians and super-heros!
  2. Ronald McDonald House – Zach Donovan spoke. Zach is 9 years old and after attending all previous meetings he got up the courage to nominate a charity and speak. Ronald McDonald House helps provide a home to out of town families that have a sick child being cared for by the Alberta Children’s Hospital. The average stay for a family is 50 nights and one family had to stay 621 nights.
  3. Opening Gaits Therapeutic Horse Riding – Sloane & Felix Powers spoke. Sloane is 9 years old and Felix is & years old. It was great to see Sloane speak and have her brother up there with her for support. That is what this group of kids is all about. Opening Gaits’ mission is to provide children and adults with disabilities the opportunity to experience all the physical, social, and emotional benefits of riding on and spending time with a horse. This charity and their horses make a huge impact in the lives of their riders from providing them confidence and happiness to helping them gain physical strength.

After the three speakers were done the kid members took out their voting ballots to make their decision. While we tallied up the votes we did a draw for door prizes for the kids…this time we had cineplex gift cards and a special North Pole Ninja book with missions.

The winner of the group donation was Ronald McDonald House and we were able to give them $570, but it didn’t stop there! When we went to give the donation we were told that Shaw Communications actually matches all youth donations to the Ronald McDonald House!! So our impact ended up being $1140!!! We love special surprises like that!

100 Kids Who Care Calgary has made a HUGE impact to our community in 2016. We were actually able to give $4,315 to 4 different local charities. Thank you for believing in what we are doing and for making our first year an amazing success. Our plan is to continue to grow our impact in 2017!

THANK YOU to our official sponsors…Calgary’s Child Magazine as well as Redline Real Estate Group and MortgageLine. These sponsorships are the key to our success!

Mark your calendars for our next event Thursday, March 2 at Silver Springs Golf & Country Club, we hope to see you all there!

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