The Falk Fehr Foundation, facilitated by the Winkler Community Foundation, presented $60,000 in donations following its annual golf tournament earlier this summer.
Funding the community
Former NHL player and foundation co-founder Eric Fehr said the tournament raised the funds, which were distributed among three organizations: $30,000 for Genesis House, and the other $30,000 split evenly between Winkler’s Central Station, as well as the Chance 2 Grow program.
“Obviously, it's tough to pick charities every year. We've done this for a lot of years now, and we're trying to continue to go through the community to make sure everybody gets a chance. But you know, these three really jumped out at us.” Fehr shared, “Chance 2 Grow is an opportunity for our foundation to support the kids.”
Fehr added that, on top of the important work that Genesis House and Central Station do, being able to help children play sports was something that resonated with their foundation.
“That's obviously where we started out, playing sports, and you know, we want to make sure everybody has a chance, doesn't matter where you come from, the ability to play is important.”
A more-than-full tournament
The golf tournament that raised the money for these organizations was almost beyond capacity this year, according to Fehr.
“Whoa, man, the tournament was awesome. We continue to push the limits on how many people we can enter in the tournament. I think we maxed out… it was 165, and we really can't go any higher,” Fehr said, adding that, unfortunately, they had to say ‘no’ to a few teams this year due to the sheer amount of interest.
“It's very hard to say no. Especially with the excitement around the event, and obviously, the goal is to raise as much money as we can, but at the same time, we want to make sure the golfers can finish the round.”
The donations
The donations, presented to Central Station, Chance 2 Grow, and Genesis House, will be used to help each move forward in their respective missions and projects they have in the works.
Anita Wiebe, Executive Director of Central Station, said, “For us, we are going to continue to help support the Community in any way we can. We've seen a significant rise in the homeless population here in Winkler, and so, just trying to figure out how we can best support folks who don't have the resources that they need.”
Sara Martens, Community Support Coordinator for the Chance 2 programs, explained what the funding will do for them: “Chance 2 Grow is a big program here in the Winkler area. They apply for swimming lessons, music lessons, soccer, baseball, just sports that they can otherwise not afford to do. But they, through this programming, apply for it.”
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She added, “Last year we had 134 applications and a lot of them from the Winkler area and that we do the central region area... So that will be of a huge help.”
Ang Braun, Executive Director of Genesis House, said their donation will go toward their transitional housing project, “For us, this type of a donation on as a project that we're working on is significant and it shows community support and that is what other funders are looking for is community supportive of this project and that that support will bring more support for us, so it's awesome.”
The Foundation shared its heartfelt appreciation to the Winkler Community Foundation for its ongoing partnership and to the entire community for coming together to make this year’s event another resounding success.