There were plenty of smiling faces at Western Financial Group on Friday morning as staff handed over a cheque to representatives of Believe in the Gold charity.
According to Marnette Uphill, Believe in the Gold is “a one hundred per cent non-profit organization that helps families with children who have cancer. Our division helps the East and West Kootenay.”
The donation from Western Financial Group totalled $1,452, money which Uphill said will go towards helping families in the Kootenay region. The funds help families to pay for many things, including travel, any medical costs that are not covered and more.
“We have four families that we are helping right now,” she said. “So we’ll just disperse it to who needs it.”
The money for this generous donation was raised as part of Western Financial Group’s yearly Support the Cause campaign.
Branch manager Shelby Rawson explained the process of gathering funds.
“We start our fundraising in the spring and it’s called Support the Cause so we basically have a goal from our Western Communities Foundation that each person raises $100 and if we hit that goal, then we get half of the money that we raised back so we did very, very well this year. It was about $3,000 that we raised so half of that goes back to Believe in the Gold.”
The staff at Western Financial Group raised money by holding a garage sale, a BBQ and fundraising within the office. However, they also did something a little creative this year to inspire people to fundraise.
Rawson described how each staff member had their face pinned up on a board in the office, keeping track of their money raised at the bottom, and then whoever got the least donations got a pie in the face.
In the past, Support the Cause donations have gone towards Elk Valley Critical Incident Response Team, Fernie Search and Rescue, Canadian Avalanche Dogs and Elk Valley Hospice. Choosing to support Believe in the Gold with this year’s funds was an easy decision to make, according to Rawson.
“One of the people in our office, family of theirs has been helped by Believe in the Gold so it was near and dear to their heart so we all decided to do it absolutely, we didn’t question it.”
