The United Way hopes to help 33,000 residents in the Grande Prairie area this year by raising roughly 1,000,000 dollars. They announced their goal for the 2018 season at Tuesday afternoon’s campaign kick off luncheon.
United Way Alberta Northwest’s Business Development and Resource Officer Jessica Pinette says they chose that number base on how much it would cost for one person to access each community organization’s services.
“It’s actually an average of 30 dollars to impact one life… So 30 dollars times the amount we want works out to be about 33 thousand lives.”
The Campaign which runs for 12 weeks until the middle of November collects money and then distributes it to over 26 different organizations in the area like the YMCA and Pregnant Parenting Teens program. Pinette says there are many different ways businesses and individuals in the area can donate.
“That could mean stating up a workplace pledge form and doing deductions off of workers paycheques or holding a barbeque or a poker tournament for the United Way. We even have a rock paper scissors tournament coming up so there are many different creative ways for people to raise funds and donate it back to the United Way.”
Most of the money raised over the course of the campaign will stay in the Grande Prairie area.
