‘Everybody is contributing’
100 Women Who Care Rural Cape Breton launched
A much-needed funding infusion of more than $10,000 will soon be awarded to a worthy charity after the successful launch of 100 Women Who Care Rural Cape Breton.
The group that includes women in Inverness, Richmond and Victoria counties will gather next month to disperse the grand total made up of the $100 donations that each member will bring to the table.
“I’m so happy someone will walk away with this because all the wonderful organizations in the counties do so much with so little,” said Mary Janet MacDonald, co-chair of the group.
“They put on bake sales and raising money a little bit at a time. But the potential is there for one of these wonderful organizations to do something great they’ve been dying to do. That’s what I hope will happen.”
The new rural Cape Breton organization was inspired by the very successful giving concept previously launched in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality.
MacDonald and co-chair Josie MacEachern discussed that concept over lunch last November, thought about it over the winter and then met with the CBRM group before going forward in rural Cape Breton.
Though the concept is similar, the new rural group will only meet once per year as opposed to the four times a year as other similar groups do.
“Being from this side of the island we really had to think about this. We knew there was no way we could get $100 women to give $400 per year so we are just starting small and we are going to do it once a year and $100.”
Since the group’s launch, 122 women have already signed up and 20 charities have put their names in the running to receive a donation.
Organizations in the running for the top prize will be randomly reduced to three after a draw late next week.
Those three finalists will remain a secret until the group’s Oct. 19 meeting at Dalbrae Academy and Strathspey Place where they will make their pitch to take away more than $10,000 in funding.
“Everybody is contributing and it is just so exhilarating for us as a group because we were so worried about if people would take to this,” MacDonald said.
“In our part of the world, you know the economy and we just were hoping people would buy into it. There’s power in that amount of money that can really help out an organization.”
Nominations for charities closed at the end of August. Women can join the new group right up until the first meeting, though.
Visit 100womenruralcapebre-ton.com or email 100womenruralcapebreton@gmail.com for more information.