Coldest Night of the Year walk in Swift Current will raise funds to support youth
Teams that sign up for the upcoming Coldest Night of the Year (CNOY) community walk in Swift Current can help to raise funds for a local youth program.
The walk is hosted by the Swift Current Community Youth Initiative (SCCYI) at The Center and funds raised through the event will support counselling and mentoring programs. This year’s fundraising goal has increased to $80,000 and SCCYI Executive Director Nathan Wiebe hopes there will be more teams signed up than last year.
“We really want to encourage people to sign up as soon as possible and if they have any questions to give us a call at The Center,” he said. “This is our big event. So we’re trying to find new ways to encourage people to get on board with it.”
CNOY is a national fundraising initiative that partners with non-profit organizations in communities across Canada to organize an annual walk in February.
The 2023 walk will take place on Feb. 25 and participating teams can make a difference through the funds they raise for a local charity partner. This is the third year that SCCYI will host the CNOY walk in Swift Current.
Last year’s event exceeded the fundraising target of $55,000 and it was well supported by the community. Wiebe said 29 teams with 145 walkers registered, but on the day of the event about 300 people actually showed up. Those were family and friends of walkers and others who just wanted to enjoy the atmosphere.
“With everybody’s hard work, we were able to raise about $66,000 to go towards our counselling and mentoring services,” he noted. “Last year was an incredible success in more ways than just a financial thing by creating an atmosphere where people had a lot of fun, could see why we’re doing what we were doing and just a mentality of bringing the community together was really at the centre of it all.”
The higher fundraising goal for 2023 is both a result of last year’s successful event and the growing need for counselling and mentoring services at The Center.
“Some teams raised some incredible numbers and made a huge effort to make our goal a possibility last year,” he said. “After reaching our goal and then some, we set our goal to be $80,000 this year. What that will allow us to do is add a full-time counselling position. Last year we were able to support and continue with what we had in place and this year we’re looking to add. There’s such a huge need within our counselling and mentoring. We need to add some staff to be able to address everything that’s going on – the outreach, the clinical side of it, just the one-on-one support. There’s so much that we identified that we need to continue to work towards.”
More participating teams and walkers will make it possible to reach the higher fundraising target for this year’s CNOY walk in Swift Current.
“We’re hoping to get about 35 teams registered and about 150 to 160 folks registered for the event,” he said. “And we don’t do this with the mentality that we’re just going to get by. We want to exceed what we set out and do the best we possibly can. We’re doing it to add a position
that is really necessary right now. So we want to really work hard and strive towards the goals that we have. They’re lofty, we totally understand that, but they’re very much worth the effort that’s needed to make it a success.”
The CNOY format makes it convenient for teams to register online by going to www.cnoy.org and to start their fundraising efforts.
“You can register a team, you can recruit your team through that online platform and you can fundraise through that online platform,” he said. “It’s not super time-consuming and at the end of it, after everybody has done their fundraising and had their fun and hopefully met their challenges and egged other people on to get involved, we meet for that walk where it’s just a big party. It’s a celebration that people can come together and enjoy that time and we can eat some food and just really focus on the celebration aspect of what the Coldest Night of the Year is.”
Wiebe felt there are different ways for teams to get motivated during their fundraising efforts. One way is to focus on the reason they are doing this.
“The way that we’ve communicated this event to folks is to think of the people that you’re serving in the process of fundraising,” he said. “You are directly affecting the lives of people at risk that are in need of mental health support and youth that are in need of a mentor.”
Another way is to challenge others to get involved and to make it a fun experience by having some friendly competition between families, co-workers or friends. “We’ve seen that happen and we heard stories of people just having a blast doing that with each other,” he said.
The CNOY community walk is an important fundraising event for SCCYI at The Center, but there is an added benefit of raising their profile in the community.
“These events are always incredible opportunities to do that,” he said. “There’s so many folks that don’t know that our counselling here is free or that we even offer
counselling. It gives us a good opportunity to highlight what we do, the services we provide and the people that work here. … We have an incredible team and they just work super hard in creating a safe and fun atmosphere for the kids that come here and the families and youth that use our services as well.”
Community sponsors help to make the event a success and there has been a positive response from businesses to support the 2023 walk.
“We’ve seen many new sponsors come on board and sponsors from last year as well,” he said. “We’re excited to bring those businesses along with us. We couldn’t do this type of event without those incredible sponsors.”
The community walk on Feb. 25 will take place along a marked route over distances of two or five kilometres, with the start and finish at The Center in downtown Swift Current. The street will be closed off and the celebration will include games for children, music and a light meal after the walk.
Those who are unable to be part of the walk on this day can still fundraise and complete their own walk at a time convenient to them.
“We know people have busy lives and so we have already had conversations with folks that are going to be participating during the week before the event,” he said. “They’re getting their team together and they’re doing a walk and stopping by. For people that are going to be doing that, we’ll have hot chocolate and treats always available at The Center that whole week of the event. We want to make sure everybody feels like they’re getting a taste of the Coldest Night of the Year in whatever way and we’re going to support those teams that can’t walk on the day.”
To register a team for the community walk in Swift Current, to donate to a team or walker, or to register as a volunteer, go to the CNOY website (www.cnoy. org). There is a link on the website to each participating community in Canada. The information for Swift Current includes details about all the teams, and there is an option to make online donations.