By Sheldon Spackman

United Way kicks-off 53rd annual fundraising campaign

Sep 6, 2018 | 3:11 PM

“Show Your Local Love”.

That’s the theme of this year’s 53rd annual United Way of Central Alberta fundraising campaign which kicked-off from the Sheraton Hotel in Red Deer on Thursday.

With over 365 red-clad supporters, volunteers and other community members in attendance, the motivating event launched the start of a four-month fundraising campaign which helps support the over 40 programs and services the United Way of Central Alberta serves.

Officials say three priority investment areas have been identified, including Education – Helping kids be all they can be, Income – Moving people from poverty to possibility and Wellness – Building strong and healthy communities.

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Fundraising efforts this year are being led by volunteer Campaign Cabinet Co-Chairs Ron Sauve from RBC and Linda Wilson from Corquest with Thursday’s luncheon alone already raising over $4,500 through a raffle and live auction.

Brett Speight, CEO, United Way of Central Alberta says the kick-off luncheon helps establish energy and motivation for the campaign which runs from now until the end of December.

“It’s the main way we fundraise to support our member agencies,” he explains. “It’s growing, last year we supported 39 member agencies in the community through various programs that we fund under our three pillars which are income, education and wellness. The theme this year is local love and unignorable, so really it’s about recognizing that there are issues that central Albertans face that really can’t be ignored and having enough love for your community which the community of central Alberta always has.”

Speight says the 2017 campaign which served 39 member agencies positively impacted over 19,000 central Albertans.

“That’s only direct impact, there’s obviously a ripple effect from that like their family members and others that live with those individuals and know those individuals,” Speight adds. “Last year, slightly over $2.1 million was raised, so obviously we’d love to seen an increase. We know that the residents of central Alberta are extremely generous but it’s really about how many people we can positively impact.”

Breast cancer survivor Heather Moyes and her23-year-old son Cameron are just two people who have come to benefit from the United Way’s funding of member agencies, receiving help from the Shalom Counselling Centre in Red Deer for the past five years now.

“The United Way supports Shalom through a program called Co-Pay,” she explains. “It enables people to pay what they’re able to and still get top-notch counselling. It’s meant the world to our family to have the mental health support that we needed through Shalom.”

Cameron Moyes says his life has been impacted by United Way of Central Alberta since first attending the Shalom Counselling Centre roughly five years ago to address difficulties at school.  

“If it wasn’t for the supporters of United Way, I would not have been able to turn to Shalom and get the help I needed after a really devastating thing in my life.”

Heather concludes it would be a great thing if more people could openly say that mental health is an issue.

“I think we wear a lot of masks and places like Shalom help you take your mask off and deal with things in a way that is healthy,” states Moyes. “Cameron thanked supporters of United Way so that more and more people can access counselling like Shalom and other places and take their masks off and be real and deal with mental health.”