Sudbury's Northern Cancer Foundation got a colourful financial boost this week thanks to the efforts of the staff and customers at Ashley HomeStore at 800 Barrydowne Road. The HomeStore calls it the annual PinkTober fundraiser in honour of the campaign for breast cancer research. Several store employees dyed their hair pink or wore pink coloured wigs as part of the effort.
For the past month, store staff had been selling $10 ballots for draws on three separate thousand-dollar in-store shopping sprees. The proceeds of the event were directed to the Northern Cancer Foundation, said HomeStore manager Grant Carriere.
"We started off a few years ago raising $10,000. And since then the amounts have gone up until this year our largest amount was $22,000," said Carriere.
He quickly added that $22,000 was "the goal".
"But our team blew right past it. We ended up with a total amount of $22,420," Carriere said.
Yolanda Thibeault, the manager of community events at fundraising at the cancer foundation, said she was so pleased to see how the fundraiser worked out.
"Events like this are huge," said Thibeault. She added that community partnerships are so important because all the money raised in Sudbury, stays in Sudbury in support of the cancer centre and other foundations associated with Health Sciences North.
"So anything that people can do to reach out and support us is very important. And we just love when companies like this come together. We just see how much the Sudbury area and the community and the citizens come together. Raising $22,000 is huge. And that's over one month."
Thibeault said that despite the ups and downs of the pandemic, she praised the thoughtful and creative effort of Ashley HomeStore for engaging their customers in a local fundraiser.
"And so something like this or doing a do-it-yourself event is really important. And it really helps capture the funds that we need to raise to keep our systems and our support in place," said Thibeault.
Len Gillis covers health care and mining for Sudbury.com.
