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Title: Pledge us or beat us! Post by: Katy on June 16, 2011, 01:48:49 PM Hi Victoria teams (and others looking to help out against cancer),
As many of you may know (or may not know!) the BC Cancer Foundation is the partner charity of the Victoria Dragon Boat Festival. Each year in addition to the Lights of Courage campaign there is a fundraising drive by the paddlers. Last year 3 teams participated - Paddlers of the Fifth Moon, Blazing Paddles and the Island Breaststrokers, between us we raised just over $30,000 which is pretty sweet for 3 teams! This year those three teams are already signed up and fundraising and in addition, Snappin' Dragons, Navy Dragon Anchors and Chateau Bateau have also signed up on-line to fundraise. I'm calling the rest of the Victoria teams out! If you can get your team on board and we can all raise even a small amount it will help a lot. All money raised on the Island stays on the Island but benefits of cancer research and improved care are widespread and affect us all. Nanaimo crews, all cancer care on the Island comes through the Vancouver Island Centre here in Victoria so it definitely benefits you too. As a researcher I see everyday how important fundraising is to help us make the advances we need to. Cancer is a myriad of diseases, there won't just be one cure. Although many types of cancer have a much higher cure rate than in previous years, we still have a long way to go. If each local paddler that raced Victoria last year raised just $130, that's over $100K for cancer research! $130 is easy, that's a few e-mails, they can ignore you if they want! If you can't get your team on board, please consider pledging one of the crews that are participating but it would be much more fun battling it out between crews! The system is really easy, all you need to do is have one person on your crew go to this link... http://donate.bccancerfoundation.com/site/TR?fr_id=1830&pg=entry (http://donate.bccancerfoundation.com/site/TR?fr_id=1830&pg=entry) register your team, then send your teammates there to join you team. Then you just email people, it's really easy! I'm hoping we can get even more crews on board this year and really show what the paddling community can do for cancer research and care. Who hasn't been affected? One of our paddlers was actually diagnosed with breast cancer at an early stage this year using a piece of equipment that we previously helped fundraise for when the Greater Victoria Hospitals Foundation was the partner charity. We all benefit from drives like this. Paddlers of the Fifth Moon are aiming for a three-peat for top fundraising team (despite currently being doubled by Snappin' Dragons!) and we're hoping we can get even more teams competing as really we all win. If you need any help getting things set up or have questions I can help. We have until the Victoria Dragon Boat Festival to raise funds, the overall goal is topping the $30K at least - the more teams we have though the easier that will be and the more we can raise. Let's see what we can do! Pledge us or beat us! :) Katy Paddler/Coach Paddlers of the Fifth Moon & Snappin' Dragons |