I can’t believe it’s already August and I have not blogged since the beginning of the year! So much has happened!
In May we held our first Girlfriend’s Night Out event featuring clothes from My Girlfriend’s Closet, a clothing colour presentation by Katherine of ICU Image Consulting, appies and wine and 50 great ladies! Well, let me tell you that you can’t keep woman from clothes! Tammy from MGC brought 3 jammed packed racks of new clothing for the ladies to try on. If you haven’t looked up My Girlfriend’s Closet online yet, please do so and see all the cool clothing Tammy has (lots of photos on Facebook). The clothes are each unique and Tammy doesn’t carry many in any style. The event was held at the River Springs Rec Centre, tickets were only $10 and included a fashion presentation, clothing colour presentation and wine and appies! During the night the women took over the ladies and the men’s changerooms in order to try on all the clothing and outfits. Clothes were flying around the changerooms, from one lady to the next, if you didn’t like it, someone else was waiting to try it on! What was great about the night is that inhibitions were thrown to the wind and strangers were asking each other if they looked good in this or that. With 20% of the clothing sales plus the generous donations we raised $1200 to help families affected by childhood cancer. We had so much fun we decided to do it again on September 24, 2011 at the River Spring Rec Centre. Call or email us for tickets, which are on sale now…they go fast so don’t wait!
We decided not to do the annual swap meet/garage sale and fire dept. car wash this year. It wasn’t for lack of trying. We had hoped to move the event to a different and bigger location in Coquitlam, but it just didn’t work out. Time was just not on our side so we decided to drop the event this year. We also lacked the time to put together the raffles we do every year as well as not having enough people on board to handle the organizing of the event. We will re-evaluate in the fall and hopefully decide on our next year’s fundraisers at that time.
Also in May, we found out that we were the recipients of a $5000 grant from the Toskan Casale Foundation through the Youth Philanthropy Initiative at Riverside Secondary. I want to send out a big thank you to the 6 groups of grade 10 students for putting together such informative and creative presentations leading to the winning presentation for the $5000 grant. What a great group of kids, I really connected to each group and had a great time meeting with each of them and answering all their questions.
In June, director Clare Adams and I attended a Fundraising Seminar and learned so much about donors and fundraising! We are excited to put into action some of the ideas we learned at the seminar.
In July we helped 2 more families with financial grants. These two families have been the most financially struggling families since we began helping families 3 years ago. All the families we help are low income or no income but these two families had other extenuating circumstances that contributed to them being in tremendous need. We take comfort in knowing that we brought some hope and help to them when they needed it most, a time when they should be focusing on their child’s battle with cancer.
Also, in July, we found out that we were the recipients of another grant, this time from Costco Wholesale in Port Coquitlam! The grant of $5000 will be presented to us on August 12th. We are so grateful for this support and to director, Donna Louie, for submitting our cause to Costco for consideration.
July ended on a sad note, when we found out we had lost another of our GDF kids to cancer (relapsed). I am sorry I cannot give further details. Our hearts and thoughts go out to this family and all the families who have lost a child to cancer.
I want to thank everyone who has donated to GDF this year. We are so very grateful for the support and to be able to help these families when they truly need it the most. We have helped 33 families now since helping our very first family in October 2008. If you have not donated this year, please consider donating now. If you donate through our website you will be issued a tax receipt immediately or you can send a cheque to us and the tax receipt will be mailed in January 2012. Also, please consider joining one of our director committees. With a time committment of only 4 hours a month you can be part of our organization and help us grow. There are plenty of different opportunities, from donor relations, event planning and organizing to grant writing and advocacy. I’m sure we can find something for you to help with that will fit with you too. We are also looking to start a youth committee in the fall where teens and young adults will work together and hold fundraisers and spread awareness of GDF throughout the lower mainland. I am excited to see more developement take flight this year and have big goals and dreams to be able to help every family who has a child with cancer in BC and eventually expand across Canada! It all started with Gaby’s wish to help other kids with cancer. We will never forget Gaby’s kind heart, infectious laugh, brilliant smile, courageous fight and a legacy left to honor.
~ Tanya
