Wales Home golf tournament tops $50K
The Wales Home Foundation’s annual golf tournament took place last Thursday, resulting in a grand total of $53,611.46 raised for the ongoing work of the province’s oldest seniors’ home.
“The Wales Home exists because of the Wales Home community,” said Jordan Arshinoff Foss, honorary chairperson of the foundation in the midst of Thursday night’s gala dinner at the Club et Académie Longchamp in Sherbrooke. Arshinoff Foss praised the donors but also the management, staff, and particularly the volunteers at the home saying that it is the work of everyone together that makes the home what it is.
The tournament was hailed by guest host Mose Persico of CTV Montreal as the biggest ever of its kind, with spots having been sold out as of June.
“It was a great day for golf and a great day for the foundation,” said Wales Home Foundation President Jim Thompson, highlighting the fact that this year’s fundraiser was a particularly significant celebration, following as it does in the wake of the news that the home will now benefit from significant government funding.
“We will be receiving $5.6 million each year for the next 15 years,” Brendalee Piironen, executive director of the Wales Home, reminded the crowd. Referring to the news as a significant weight off the home’s back, she said that the new money will make room to reduce rent for residents, hire 12 new employees, increase salaries, and undertake major and necessary improvements to the home itself.
Although not mentioned specifically in the executive director’s speech, a slideshow on the wall of the gala
periodically showed off a large expansion planned for 2019.
The Wales Home Foundation was created 25 years ago to help support the work of the home in the absence of any kind of government funding, and although funding has now been granted to the home Piironen underlined the importance of the foundation’s ongoing existence by pointing out the important role that the money plays in improving the lives of residents. While funds from the foundation had notably been used in recent years to help pay down a growing operations debt, the money raised in past years has also regularly contributed to new equipment and general improvements to the living environment at the care facility.
The gala dinner also offered the chance to announce an open house planned for the home’s new front-ofhouse expansion on October 7. That space, which has been under construction since October of 2016, is set to include a new therapy locale, a therapeutic swimming pool, a day center, an expansion to the current main dining room, a new shipping/receiving area, a waste management center, a cinema room and billiards room, as well as employee lounges and administrative space, including a training center.