The United Way of Estevan has announced their goal, which is even higher than in years past.
“Our goal this year is $335,000,” said United Way of Estevan president Travis Frank. “We’re up $10,000 from last year. Our plan to get there is with the annual telethon we do every year and every year we surpass our goal and the community comes together really well. Hopefully we’ll do that again this year.”
Last year’s telethon raised a total of $350,215, about $25,000 over their goal.
The groups are on board with the higher goal.
“We have 15 member agencies where the money goes towards and every year they submiot their requests for how much they need,” Frank said. “We’ve never been able to fund them the way that we want to but we’re going to be able to raise them as much as we can to get them as much funding as we possibly can.”
Currently, the funds raised by the United Way will be going to the CNIB, the Canadian Red Cross, the Creighton Lodge Trust Committee, Envision Counselling and Support Centre, the Estevan Area Home Care, Estevan Area Literacy Group, Estevan Diversified Services Inc., Estevan Family and Friends Inc, Estevan Family Resource Centre, Estevan Regional Nursing Home Auxiliary, Muscular Dystrophy Canada, St. Joseph’s Health Care Auxiliary, St. Joseph’s Adult Day Program, Saskatchewan Abilities Council and Spinal Cord Injury Saskatchewan.
The United Way are preparing for their Annual Day of Caring May 30.
“It’s our volunteer event and this is our tenth year where basically we pick 41 projects and we’ve got over 100 volunteers signed up already,” he said. “We’ll have general volunteering around the community, things like cleaning windows and cleaning out gutters, mowing lawns. Anything we can do to help people who need it.”
It’s a popular event in the community.
“It’s grown every year and we’re really excited about that,” Frank said. “Because it’s not a fundraising event we don’t really spend a lot of money on it, so it’s really grown organically. But we have a lot of businesses who donate their employees. MNP and RBC give half their staff in the morning and the other half in the afternoon, which is amazing. And every year we have more projects and more volunteers, which is wonderful.”
There is also a committee with the United Way looking to help out with their community impact fund.
“We’ve revamped that this year so people can apply for projects and major funding,” Frank said. “We have a committee that’s in charge of that and they review the applications and determine where the funding is going to go.”
