Patricia Sam writes...
"Lemons, the perfect ingredient for lemon 'aid'."
Being laid off could be seen as a "setback", or as an opportunity. I chose to see it as the latter and had a fun couple of months discovering talents I did not know I had.
It was after looking at Oprah’s Christmas Kindness show in South Africa, and among other motivators such as reading Mr. Lewis’s speech on his website that I was inspired to "make lemonade with the lemons I had been given". I wanted to do my bit to help the Orphans of HIV/AIDS in Africa, and came up with the idea of doing a 5km Walkathon & Run to benefit the Stephen Lewis Foundation.
Neither a fundraiser, nor an event planner am I, and was therefore unaware of the magnitude of work that was involved in pulling this event together. Thanks to a dedicated and extraordinary group of people, what began as a letter campaign to our City officials including our Mayor, culminated in the hosting of a wonderful event, which took place on a rainy Saturday morning in October 2004. After months of lobbying, the City of Toronto graciously granted us approval to host our event in the Ernest Thompson Seaton Park, in Toronto.
Among some of the exciting things we accomplished was to design a simple and colourfully fabulous logo (of "reaching" hands). Using the logo, we created t-shirts, which we incorporated into our registration package for the event.
The day of the event we had torrential rain. This prevented a huge turn out, but did not dampen our spirits. We warmed up to music by South African Canadian artist, Lorraine Klassen and had a fabulous time. Amidst an array of great fall colours, we ran, walked and reached out to Africa in a large municipal park in beautiful downtown Toronto. We have great pictures to prove it!
A young Zambian Canadian woman who is herself a UN volunteer gave opening remarks at the event. She is a very proud mother of several HIV/AIDS orphans she adopted, when her own sister passed away from AIDS in Zambia. She spoke from personal experiences with family members who have had AIDS and the difficulties and stigma associated with the disease.
Kudos and Thank you to:
- City of Toronto for the generous donation of the park for hosting the event.
- Tim Hortons and Weston's Bakery for donations of food for the event.
- Johnson Diversey
Some of our achievements: We raised over $5,000 for the HIV/AIDS Orphans of Africa. Our goal is continue to have events every year with this sum being our base line from which to excel.
The Minister of Health for the Province of Ontario, the Honourable George Smitherman brought greetings to participants. The Minister encouraged us to continue this important work and vowed he would be back to support us at the event next year.
Sincerely,
Patricia Sam