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Students raise money for charity and learn their craft

A group of Cambrian College students accomplished two important things over the weekend: they helped two charities and learned some valuable lessons about organizing a fundraising event.
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Kaleigh McIntyre, left, Candice Morel, Felicia Simon, Amylee Laforest and Naomi Friesen are PR students at Cambrian College who put on a charity country fair Saturday at the college. Photo by Darren MacDonald.
A group of Cambrian College students accomplished two important things over the weekend: they helped two charities and learned some valuable lessons about organizing a fundraising event.

Amylee Laforest said she and four other PR students – Kaleigh McIntyre, Naomi Friesen, Felicia Simon and Candice Morel – organized a country fair at Cambrian on Saturday in part to pass their events management course.

“We've had carnival games, and a bouncy castle, we had the vendor fair,” Laforest said, with all the money raised going to the KICX for Kids charity and the Cambrian Foundation.

KICX for Kids is raising money to renovate the children's treatment room at Health Sciences North, while the Cambrian Foundation provides bursaries and scholarship to students.

The event was a success, Laforest said, with each charity splitting the $1,000 raised at the event. They chose KICX because it does work locally, she said.

“The money stays in the community – and it's for kids.”

The five students began organizing the event in September, and were faced with learning how to convince sponsors to support them, with so many similar requests companies receive. But Laforest said Vale came through with some funds, as did the Knights of Columbus. And vendors were charged fees, as well, to host booths at the event.

“It's been a long, hectic road,” she said. The hardest part was “finding donations and sponsors so we would have a budget, because we didn't have any money starting out.”

They had a few hundred kids show up Saturday to enjoy such things as face painting, a giant checker board, a bouncy house and a mini-putt.

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