City gives back to community with United Way campaign
Posted Mar 12, 2010 By Theresa Fritz
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Tweet ThisEMC News - The generosity of City of Ottawa employees towards the United Way/Centraide's 2009 campaign was overwhelming and no one is prouder than Ward 5 West Carleton-March councillor Eli El-Chantiry.
El-Chantiry, along with Ward 10 Gloucester-Southgate councillor Diane Deans, was an honorary co-chair of the city's United Way campaign.
This financial success has made it the largest United Way community campaign for 2009.
"Our goal was $580,000, $5,000 more than the year before. In 2008, we didn't reach our goal," he told the EMC. "This time we went $29,000 over our goal and raised $609,090."
The final total was unveiled Feb. 24 at Ottawa city council by Deans, El-Chantiry and campaign co-chairs Susan Jones, General Manager, Emergency and Protective Services and Arlene Grégoire, director, Building Code Services/Chief Building Official.
"Our employees' desire to create lasting change in the community is truly impressive," said city manager Kent Kirkpatrick.
"So many talented employees had a helping hand in our campaign's success, and the hands that benefit from all their efforts and enthusiasm are the people in the community who need it the most."
The campaign was kicked off with its 'Endless Summer' theme in September 2009 and El-Chantiry and Deans donned costumes to play the parts of Grease's Danny Zuko and Sandy Olsson.
"According to the city manager (Kirkpatrick), it made a difference when he saw two councillors showing up in costume," El-Chantiry joked of the city's campaign success.
"What made a difference, other than we made a fool of ourselves, what made a difference this time is we opened it up (campaign) to the whole city. The United Way is mostly concentrated in the central part of the city. This time around, we decided it was time for us to get involved in the rural areas."
What this meant was that city campaign events didn't all happen at city hall. Instead, a number of small events were also held whereby organizers brought the events to the employees.
We know we can't draw staff to the downtown all the time so we went to the staff's workplace," El-Chantiry said. "I attended a lot of events."
Some of the events included a golf tournament at the Irish Hills Golf Club in Carp (which turned out to be the largest golf tournament ever hosted by the United Way) as well as smaller barbecues, etc.
The councillor was proud of the fact barbecues used beef from the Fitzroy Beef Farmers, corn from Hudson's Corn and apples from Randy Maguire's Harvest Moon Orchards, all West Carleton businesses.
"Our sincere thanks go to every single donor from the City of Ottawa," said Michael Allen, president and CEO of United Way/Centraide Ottawa in a press release.
"The theme of this year's campaign was 'rediscover community' and we asked residents to tell us what they wanted their community to be.
"City employees, through their donations and volunteer efforts, clearly want to see an improved quality of life and a stronger and healthier community."
El-Chantiry said he believes that "getting everyone involved, all departments, all city staff" was the reason for this year's city campaign success.
"Special thanks should go the staff who organized this, every small business in the rural areas who took part in this. There was a lot of effort and energy that went into this campaign," he concluded.
"This (campaign success) speaks to how the city, as a whole, is engaged."
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