Hi! My name is Norm Reed, a Kamloops resident and chemistry professor at TRU. With the help of my wife Judy Reed, we established a “100 Men Who Care” group in Kamloops in the spring of 2015. This group is modelled after other “100 Men Who Care” and “100 Women Who Care” groups in various communities throughout Canada and the United States.
As you may be aware, Kamloops has had an active 100 Women Who Care group for a few years. You can check them out at: www.100womenkamloops.com.
We have established a parallel group for men in Kamloops, we need more active members, and so we are inviting you and your friends to join us in being part of our next meeting for 2018 on Monday, December 3rd, at the Thompson Rivers Science Building (Ken Lepin Building) – Room S-203. TRU graciously allows faculty members like myself to book classroom space for public meetings at no cost. Doors to the meeting are open at 6:30 pm for meet and greet time and there is free parking on the campus after 5:00 pm. Park behind the Ken Lepin (Science) Building and enter from the rear. Room S-203 is at the end of the hall on your right if you enter from the rear.
The model is an incredibly simple and powerful fund raising tool, and requires very little of your time. “100 Men Who Care” groups are not “official” club or organizations and handle no money. Here are the point by point details:
(a) Individuals who decide to be part of the group simply agree to be part of a two hour evening meeting three to four times a year.
(b) Each active participant can nominate a local non-profit charity, the name of which goes into a draw pool. The non-profit organization must be able to issue tax receipts and they must be able to plan projects for possible funding that will serve a number of people (i.e. not one individual or an one individual family) and that are local to the Kamloops area.
(c) At the previous meeting three names of the non-profits in our pool are randomly selected to be invited to the next meeting. At that next meeting the representatives for the respective groups have ten minutes each to present their proposed project for funding.
(d) Our group then takes a secret ballot vote by paper ballot, the majority rules and then each participant writes a $100 cheque to the successful organization. If you cannot make the meeting it is expected that you will still contribute the $100.00.
(e) The two groups that are not successful have their names go back immediately into the pool. Successful groups stay out of the pool for two years.
(f) Successful groups are asked to return to the next meeting in order to give a brief report on how their project is going.
When there “100” members on our roster we will be giving out $10,000.00!We currently have about 35 active members, so we are definitely looking for more!
Our inaugural get together on April 27, 2015 resulted in $5,000.00 being raised for the Ashes to Dust Mountain Bike Camp sponsored by the Kamloops Phoenix Centre. Sian Lewis from the Phoenix Centre reported back to us on the camp at our second meeting for 2015 on September 14th, 2015, were we saw some great photos of the camp mountain bikers in action! Here is a list of the organizations funded so far:
(1) Phoenix Centre – April 2015; (2) Big Little Science Centre – Sept. 2015; (3) Ask Wellness – Nov. 2015; (4) Canadian Mental Health –Kamloops – Mar. 2016; (5) Caring Dads – June 2016; (6) Pregnancy Care Kamloops – Oct. 2016; (7) Chris Rose Centre – Jan. 2017; (8) Kamloops Sexual Assault Centre – May 2017; (9) Mothers for Recovery – October 2017; (10) SPCA – Feb. 2018; (11) Big Little Science Centre May 2018; (12) Kamloops Child Development Centre – Sept. 2018
At our Dec. 3rd, 2018 meeting (Mtg. No. 13) the following groups will be making their pitch for possible funding:
Pregnancy Care Centre – Kamloops
Habitat for Humanity – Kamloops
Interior Community Services – Youth Outreach Program
Cheers!
Norm and Judy Reed
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