Helping others
Reagh Ellis to receive 2015 Humanitarian Award, Allyson Trainor the 2015 Young Humanitarian Award
Business leader Reagh Ellis of Charlottetown will receive the Canadian Red Cross 2015 Humanitarian Award for Prince Edward Island and university student Allyson Trainor of Cornwall will receive its 2015 Young Humanitarian Award, the Red Cross has announced.
With family roots in tourism, Ellis shares his expertise in support of tourism and other sectors of the P.E.I. economy. He’s been president of Cavendish Promotions, chairman of the P.E.I. Tourism Association’s development committee, an advisor to Canada Lands Co. and to the City of Summerside and its tourism association, and serves on boards of the Charlottetown Area Development Corporation and Greater Charlottetown and Area Chamber of Commerce.
Ellis acquired a Mark’s Work Wearhouse franchise at the age 27 and built it into one of the company’s most successful franchises with almost 100 employees in peak seasons. He’s committed to paying forward the help he received early in his career, now advising and mentoring young Atlantic entrepreneurs at little or no cost as president of the not-for-profit Entrepreneurs3.0, or e3.
“Reagh Ellis’s investments in local initiatives are well known on the Island and throughout the Atlantic region,” said Laura Johnson- Montigny, P.E.I. Director of the Canadian Red Cross. “Our organization is among many to benefit from his generosity as he helped us raise more than $1 million for our newly built provincial headquarters and disaster operations and training centre for P.E.I.”
While studying at UPEI, Allyson Trainor assisted special needs patients at Hillsborough Hospital and at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown. She volunteered with the Provincial Speech Pathology clinic, which inspired her to pursue a career in that field and continue her studies in speech pathology this fall at McGill University in Montreal.
She recently spent a month with a group of international youth volunteers helping with mental health patients at Samutthana, the King’s College London Resource Centre for Trauma, Displacement and Mental Health in Nawala, Sri Lanka.