Ministry of Tourism and Culture/OSS/OTMPC exceeds fundraising goal
This year’s campaign co-chairs Greg Shick (left) and Angelo Mitsopoulos (right) stand in front of one of the amazing displays in the Ministry of Tourism and Culture’s annual pumpkin-carving contest. You can see more photos from the day in the Flickr set.
Wrapping up their fundraising campaign for United Way Toronto on Halloween Day, employees of the Ministry of Tourism and Culture got together for their annual pumpkin-carving contest. The competition was fierce—and full of fun—as carvers created pumpkin marvels such as the three winning picks: a CN Tower themed display, Niagara Falls tourism spread and elaborate Cinderella landscape, complete with a small play put on by the carvers.
“Our wrap-up event, the pumpkin-carving competition, is really a fun one and people get really creative and competitive. It’s nice because we get people from all around the Ministry taking part,” explains this year’’s Campaign Co-chair Greg Shick.
Special judges Steven Davidson, Deputy Minister of Tourism and Culture; Ian Davidson, Deputy Minister of Community Safety and United Way OPS Campaign Chair; and Donna Ratchford, Assistant Deputy Minister, Culture Division and MTC United Way Executive Champion were on hand to help pick the winning pumpkin displays.
Co-chairs Greg and Angelo Mitsopoulous were glad to have help throughout their three-week fundraiser from their amazing campaign committee—Donna Ratchford, Nancy Rowland, Jérôme Laflamme, Melinda Lo, Valerie Holliday, Tamara Gates, Jeffrey Oakes, Nadia Sacco, Kelly Johnston, Florianne Yeung and their wonderful Communications Chair, Olivia Lam—and other activities to help them exceed their fundraising goal this year, which was set at $49,000.
Employees responded to the goal with great generosity, raising $54,000 for our community.
Other fundraising events included a waffle breakfast, mini golf event, international potluck, a Deputy’s dessert cart that raised over $1,000 alone, and employee payroll giving and pledge collections.
“I really have to commend the staff for the amount of participation they show, because it’s relatively easy for people to write a pledge form or write a cheque or donate a few dollars,” says Greg. “For people who are actually participating by assisting with setting the events up and attending them, it really shows people are concerned with the needs of our community—we didn’t have to sell people on the idea.”
Thank you to everyone at the Ministry of Tourism and Culture for your continued support—we couldn’t support our community without you.
