It was bumper-to-bumper traffic Thursday morning at the Penticton Lakeside Resort for the 12th annual United Way Drive-Thru Breakfast.
Local officials, businesses and community members were out bright and early to hand out breakfast and collect donations for United Way BC.
“With this, you hear about people in need in the city and you’ve done something to help them. It’s not gone off into the stratosphere somewhere, you know it’s keeping it within the area,” Penticton’s Mayor Julius Bloomfield said.
“I think that’s an important thing that really makes it feel like we’re helping people that we bumped into on a daily basis.”
Thursday’s event raised $22,165, which is less than the organization’s initial fundraising goal of $30,000.
The money, however, goes directly back into the community. United Way funding has already made an impact in Penticton, including through South Okanagan Similkameen Brain Injury Society executive director Linda Sankey.
“Our organization receives some funding to help folks that are experiencing homelessness in the area. And the Brain Injury Society is interested in that specifically because sometimes when people have a brain injury, their ability to maintain their housing changes – they are on a slippery slope and sometimes that ends them in homelessness,” the brain injury society said.
“We connected with this funding from the United Way, and we were able to hire a full-time support worker and already connected with about 32 people in this last year and made a really big difference in those people’s lives.”
This year, fundraising efforts were focused on collecting money for child and youth mental health in the South Okanagan.
Funds will be going toward the local Foundry, Boys and Girls Clubs, the South Okanagan Similkameen Canadian Mental Health Association and the Lower Similkameen Community Food Hub Farm and Garden.
“The impact is really profound and particularly with children and youth. So there’s a lot of things that can happen when you’re a child and that kind of impacts you later in life,” said Naomi Woodland, United Way Central and South Okanagan Similkameen regional co-ordinator.
“Unpacking that and making sure supports are in place when they’re a child or youth is essential for a healthy inclusive community.”
“We know that today there’s a lot of vulnerability and particularly with youth,” said Kris Gibson, the United Way corporate relations provincial director.
“We want to ensure that we are able to raise as much dollars as possible to invest back into the community into local kids and youth programs.”
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