Brakeman Foundation helping to feed hungry children

Buying a canvas to drape over a chuckwagon during the Calgary Stampede’s Rangeland Derby offers companies great exposure over the 10 days of racing.

Many of the names that support their favourite drivers are well-known to Calgarians, but an unfamiliar entry, Friends of the Brakeman, appeared on the list this year, buying four chuckwagons.

The Brakeman Foundation was founded in 2012 by Derek Krivak and Earl Hale as a not-for-profit organization focused on helping children in the Calgary and surrounding area.

They began by hosting individuals over the 10 days of the GMC Rangeland Derby as a primary fundraising event, with all profits donated to select charities. Krivak says as the foundation grew, so, too, did its mandate, which has become the “Zero Hungry Kids” campaign. Its goal is that no child in the Calgary school system, from kindergarten to Grade 6, is without nourishment on school days.

Krivak was a pre-med student at University of Winnipeg with a bio-chemistry degree, but after riding his motorcycle to Calgary to look for summer work, he got a job on the rigs with Precision Drilling and never returned to Manitoba.

After four and half years in the field, he joined Gas Technical Institute and in 2003 became a project manager with the Alberta Research Council to exploit new technology with coal bed methane.

Krivak was president and CEO of Stealth Ventures, a junior oil and gas company before becoming director of unconventional gas with Hatch — the only non-engineer on its management team.

In 2012, he launched Shift Resources, a company focused on converting natural gas to diesel.

He has used his success in the oil and gas industry to help ensure the 5,000 children in Calgary schools identified as lacking proper nourishment get breakfast, snacks and lunch during their school day.

Brakeman Foundation has no staff but 15 passionate volunteers who help raise the money needed to support its partner agencies.

Stampede chuckwagon racing is the major fundraising event and this year it was back again for a ninth year to bid on canvases that it will sell off to other companies. It will also donate all of the money from corporate events it hosts at Stampede.

Brakeman’s other big fundraiser is a celebrity cook-off held in January at the Calgary Petroleum Club.

The executive chefs of the club and First & Vine in Airdrie created delicious items from ingredients selected by cowboys — that included pickled cactus. This year’s event raised more than $20,000.

Krivak and Hale are firm believers in that business must have a social responsibility, and charities should be run as a efficiently as a business.

NEWS AND NOTES

Teresa Woo-Paw founded the Asian Heritage Foundation in 2001, and since leaving provincial politics, she has devoted a lot of her efforts, with co-chair Gabriel Li, to developing a new strategy to raise its profile. May is Asian Heritage Month across Canada and the Calgary foundation is sponsoring a concert with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, May 11 at the Jack Singer Concert Hall.

The event will kick off Missing Chapters: Untold Stories of Asian Canadians in Calgary, a project that follows consultation with 50 of the city’s Asian communities. During Canada’s anniversary year, it plans to collect and share 150 of these stories.

A number will be featured at a reception to include cellist Arnold Choi, pianist Annie Pham and the Midnight Taiko Kai Drummers ahead of the CPO performance.