Dare to care
The 100 Men Who Care charity managed to raise $13,600 for local charities. $10,000 for House of Lazarus and $3,600 for Winchester District Memorial Hospital. Pictured from left, Dan Gasser, Diane Crummy, Cindy Peters, manager of direct mail and events WDMH, North Dundas Mayor Eric Duncan, Sandy Casselman, Linking Hands co-ordinator with House of Lazarus, Devon Byers and Dan Pettigrew.      Glover photo

Kory Glover
Record Staff
CHESTERVILLE – The 100 Men Who Care raised a total of $13,600 for charity Thurs., Sept. 27, awarding $10,000 to the House of Lazarus for their Handyman Heroes Project and $3,600 to the Winchester District Memorial Hospital (WDMH) to help with the cost of a new wireless fetal monitor.

“I am very excited and overwhelmed and just grateful to everyone who voted for us,” said Sandy Casselman, Linking Hands co-ordinator with House of Lazarus.

Casselman made a pitch for their Handyman Heroes Project to the 100 Men Who Care, a project meant to help families struggling financially with home improvements.

“What House of Lazarus does is look for the gaps, services and resources in the community and tries to fill them,” said Casselman. “So, one of the things we discovered last year when we were delivering free wood to our food bank clients was that they own homes that are falling apart but they don’t have the money to fix them. So, we’ve had volunteer contractors and mechanics come forward, asking how they can help. We decided to bring them together for a project.”

WDMH’s pitch asked for help funding the replacement of a wireless fetal monitor. Cindy Peters, manager of direct mail and events with WDMH, said that a deal was made with an unknown third party that if they raised $5,000 for their cause, he would match the donation to help them reach their goal.

“We have to report back to him. My managing director was looking after that, so hopefully he will match what we’ve raised tonight,” said Peters. “This was a wonderful event and we’re very appreciative to the ‘Men’ for choosing us, there were a lot of great charities tonight with great causes.”

“The 100 Men event actually came from the women, the women took a leadership role in North Dundas and did their version in the spring and they had 200 women in 36 hours and we were quite impressed with that,” said North Dundas Mayor Eric Duncan. “We got the idea from South Dundas and we thought that we could definitely do this, we love how simple it is and 100 per cent goes straight to charity.”

Much like the 100 Women Who Care event, people can sign up online in advance or they can register on site during the event.

“So, they bring $100, whether it be cash or blank cheque, and the charities make their pitch for their projects; each have three minutes,” said Duncan. “Then, at the end of the pitches, the ‘Men’ all have ballots and they vote for who they want to support. Whoever comes in first place, whatever they requested up to $10,000, they get, and if there’s money left over for second place, it could fund all or some of their project.”