Event Cleans Up in Fundraising
Story by Lindsay Campbell, Photo by Matthew Goertz
After three consecutive years of community fundraising, Thunder Bay’s Dirty Girls will be celebrated by the Canadian Cancer Society as a successful humanitarian event this month. The event will receive the “Celebrating Impact in Community Revenue Award” on April 13 at the Canadian Cancer Society’s Impact and Community Recognition Luncheon.
As a single-day initiative, Dirty Girls has raised an cumulative amount of over $660,000 since its debut in 2013. Sharla Brown, Dirty Girls founder, will be accepting the award. She says she is honoured to have the event receive so much attention throughout the community.
“It’s overwhelming in a lot of ways where you start with just an idea of how you’d like to help an organization. It’s surpassed anything I thought it would turn out to be,” she says. “I never thought it could raise this much money for such an incredible organization that does such wonderful work for the community and our region.”
While this year the fundraising goal is $100,000, Brown explains she is confident the community will outdo itself as it has previously. “It takes a lot of people to pull off something like this,” she says. “There are so many sponsors, participants, volunteers, and the staff from the Canadian Cancer society. These people work so hard and every year we’ve blown our fundraising goal out of the water.”
The run will be changing its location this year to Loch Lomond, and Brown says she will be capping the number of participants at 1,000. Registration for the 5 km run will take place on April 16 in Intercity Shopping Centre from 9:30 am until 3 pm, in the promotions court.
A printable registration form along with rules and regulations can be found at dirtygirlstbay.com.
