Tree of Hope campaign meets goal
Published Saturday November 28th, 2009
$1,610,866 million raised during annual radiothon
Hundreds of bright green balloons and coloured streamers drifted from the ceiling during the final minutes of the 14-hour Tree of Hope radiothon yesterday as participants celebrated reaching the $1.6-million goal.
All day the total had slowly been building toward the ambitious target set by this year's organizers, and with 20 minutes left to go a $37,500 donation from the community of Rogersville put the campaign over the top.
Donations were still being made, but as of the end of the radiothon yesterday, the 20th edition of the fundraiser had netted an impressive $1,610,866.
In the end, Bertin Haché, executive director of the Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont Hospital Foundation, says raising money isn't the only thing the campaign is about.
"Behind the numbers you have needs and behind the needs you have patients and behind the patients you have emotions," he says. "We're saying to them this is tough times, but you have a full community behind you.
"The campaign is more than a financial goal, it's more than technology; it's moral support."
All day, singers and musicians and choirs had entertained the hundreds of people who came to the NBCC Dieppe campus to take in the show live, while many whose lives had been touched by cancer related their own personal journeys.
Peggy Guérin of Caraquet, one of this year's Tree Keepers, also volunteered several hours of her time to answer phones last night.
"This is my way of giving back to the (Mgr. Henri-Cormier) lodge," she says. "I stayed there for nine weeks and it was a privilege. I received so much."
Guérin says she is one of the rare patients at the lodge who didn't actually have cancer. But late in 2006 she had to undergo weeks of daily treatment for lymphoedema, a cancer-related disease that is treated in much the same way cancer is.
Without the lodge, she says she either would have been hospitalized or would have had to forego treatment because it simply wouldn't have been financially possible for her to stay here otherwise.
"If I didn't have treatment, I would probably have lost my foot," she says.
Instead, she became part of the lodge family, making friends she still keeps in contact with.
"Unfortunately, nobody is immune to cancer. People are either going to get it or know of somebody who has developed cancer," she says. "If there is any way of eliminating the disease, I'm all for it. But if not, at least help in the relief of patients and family members."
Running the radiothon every year is a massive undertaking, one that requires at least 300 volunteers to keep things running smoothly.
Almost everywhere one looked yesterday, there seemed to be a green-shirted volunteer running here or there, answering phones, helping to direct traffic.
"It's remarkable every year. You see the passion and the willingness of the community to do all they can to support (the campaign)," says Haché, speaking not just of the volunteers but those who make donations. "That is what drives this campaign -- the willingness of people to do something good for his neighbour."
One of the things that makes the Tree of Hope radiothon special is the number of students who raise thousands upon thousands for the campaign at their schools.
Through spaghetti suppers and pajama and hat days and bake sales and penny drives, dollar by dollar they often collect massive sums. Such is the case at École Le Mascaret in Moncton, which dropped off a cheque for $11,200 yesterday morning.
Vice-principal Debra Kerry says the school's 550 students collected the funds in just three weeks.
Le Mascaret, of course, has a close connection with the Tree of Hope because Sean Collins, who died of cancer in 2007, was a student there.
But Kerry says the school supported the campaign even before Sean became part of the student body, even before they become Le Mascaret, in fact, when students were still attending the now-defunct École Vanier.
"It is something that the students and all the groups, all of the school, thinks is a good cause," she says. "Everybody is touched by cancer one way or another. Sometimes it is our friends, but sometimes it is our family, an aunt, a grandfather, our mother, it could be anybody."
Kerry says fundraising of this sort is something the school likes to see because it develops altruism in the students as they work to collect money that doesn't necessarily directly benefit them.
It wasn't only local schools who got into the spirit; schools from all over the province called in donations during yesterday's radiothon.
One particularly touching donation came from École Marie-Gaétane in Kedgwick. Student council president Christelle Fortin and the student council teacher advisor drove all the way to Moncton to present a cheque for $4,129.12 -- the largest amount the school has ever raised for the campaign.
Vice-principal Paul Castonguay says they have been raising money for the Tree of Hope every year since 2000.
"We have a lot of people here in the Kedgwick area who have cancer and we have a student here who has had cancer since Grade 7 and is now in Grade 12, so it is to encourage him in (fighting) his disease," he says. "It means everything to them to participate in a cause like that."
Castonguay says they had a challenge going with Tree of Hope president Martin Latulippe; that if they raised $2,000, he would come and put on a free motivational conference for the students. At some point, they raised the bar to $2,500, "and we blew that amount (out of the water)," Castonguay says, so Latulippe will no doubt soon be heading north.
The school has about 175 students in Grades 8 through 12, which works out to them raising more than $23.50 each or, to put it into perspective another way, $3.60 for every person in the village.
"We are proud of our students, they are very kind," Castonguay says. "Everybody here is very excited with the amount."
While many of the projects or entities supported by the campaign are located in Moncton, Haché says they draw support from the whole province because things like the Dr. Léon-Richard Oncology Centre support patients across New Brunswick.
A patient from Campbellton, for example, may only have to come to the centre once or twice to get treatment started before being able to finish a course of chemotherapy at home.
"But without the nucleus of experts here, you can't do that," Haché says.
Funds from this year's campaign will support five projects including creating an endowment fund for the Mgr. Henri-Cormier Lodge, supporting the Atlantic Cancer Research Institute, purchasing an endoscopic ultrasound and equipment to treat skin cancer, and financing an education and awareness campaign on cancer prevention.
Disabled
Search Articles
More CE Network Sites & Partners:
