By Adam Donnelly

United Way kicks off #LocalLove campaign in Kamloops

Sep 28, 2018 | 11:27 AM

KAMLOOPS — Each year, the United Way Thompson Nicola Cariboo kicks off their annual campaign with a fundraiser breakfast. The event is meant to give United Way supporters with a glimpse of the upcoming campaign’s theme while recognizing the successes of the year that was; this year’s kickoff event was a little different than other years for a couple of reasons.

A few hundred members of the Kamloops community awoke early Friday morning, but did so for a good cause: The United Way Thompson Nicola Cariboo held their annual Campaign Kickoff Breakfast, with a lofty goal set for this year.

“Our goal this year is to put $500,000 more into the community,” United Way Thompson Nicola Cariboo Executive Director Danalee Baker explained. “Last we put $2.2 million into the community. This year we want to do $2.7 million. That is because last year there were $500,000 in requests we couldn’t fill, so we want to try and meet that need and raise those extra dollars.”

To help raise those necessary funds, the United Way introduced a pair of themes for the new campaign in the forms of hashtags: they hope to use #LocalLove to help solve some of the community’s and region’s #unignorable problems.

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“Local Love refers to the community solutions the United Way brings,” United Way TNC Board Chair Hugh MacInnes told CFJC Today. “When we walk down the street and we see people that don’t have a home or have some kind of addiction… the ‘unignorable’ problems in our community. The only way we can solve them is to employ our ‘Local Love’ as we’re calling it… to help those in our community who need help.”

After breakfast, the crowd headed outside for new twist on the campaign kickoff breakfast: teams of eight or more from a number of the United Way’s top supporters took turns pulling a 17,000 pound Arrow Transport truck.

“We wanted to symbolically show how everyone in the community is doing their part,” Baker said. “On every team, there are stronger people and there weaker people… If we work together, we’ll get there in the end.”

The hope now is that the community can all pull together to and show some local love to those in need in the community.