Romantic Raffle Winners

Wendy helps as Valentine draws the winners.

We’re thrilled to announce the winners of the Valentine’s Day Romantic Raffle, which was drawn today. The tickets were drawn by none other than Valentine, who was happy to lend his skills to his namesake’s day.

The winners are:

1st prize: Cory Seebach
2nd prize: Anne Robson
3rd prize: Grace Evans

Congratulations to the winners, and our deep gratitude to everyone who purchased tickets, and to all the volunteers who worked tirelessly to sell tickets.

Wendy, Doug, Val and friends share a laugh as Valentine draws the winners.

The following report comes from Grant Corriveau, who was instrumental in orchestrating the volunteers and making the raffle the success it was. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and we wish everyone to know our extreme gratitude for their efforts. Grant reports:

The top of the ‘Thanks’ list has to go to Doug Jones who organized the prizes, sold (by far) the most tickets, and helped tirelessly at the malls with chauffeuring parrots, talking to the public, explaining the WPR’s mission, and selling more raffle tickets! He was aided and abetted by his wife, Val, who was the main parrot wrangler, coordinating which parrots were available and transporting them to the malls, along with the necessary support gear (food, water, towels, towels, and more towels to clean up, parrot snacks, etc…). Courtnay helped a lot at the various malls, and also with moving parrots – especially her buddy, Valentine. And of course Anne & Larry Neil contributed a lot of time and effort. Stephanie Martin and a friend (Jennifer?) helped all day one Saturday at Woodgrove. Also Sasha, Sam, Miranda and Patrick helped out at Country Club Mall. Still others helped with local ticket sales and support (too numerous to mention, but nonetheless valued and held in great appreciation by us all).

The feathered friends who spent many hours interacting with and charming the crowds were mainly Sydney, Nikki, Lunar, Little Peaches, Kelley, and Spirit also helped out one day with Stephanie. And of course Valentine, who was the loudest of all and called folks in from the far ends of the malls to let them know he was there! So, of course he got to make the draw for the Valentine’s Day raffle.

Wendy, of course, had to do the legal stuff with the B.C. Gaming Commission to obtain the raffle licence and arrange the insurance documents, etc, to allow us to be present at the malls. She still has some paperwork to fill in before it’s all finished for her.

Our volunteer group did a great job of working together on a large project like this for the first time. I hope we will continue to see growth of this group in both numbers and team-work.

With ticket sales and some cash donations given during the campaign, we raised just over $8,000! There has also been an increase in visitors over the last few weekends apparently. Another positive spin-off!