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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

East Coast artist orchestrating kick-start to Pennies campaign

By: Kevin Rollason

Posted: 11/7/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

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Christmas Cheer Boards’ Kai Madsen (left) and Kevin Rollason hold a Carr painting. (TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

How to contribute

YOU can drop off coins or dollar bills of any denomination at the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave.

Or you can send us a cheque, made out to Pennies from Heaven, to 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, Man., R2X 3B6. You will get a charitable tax receipt from either the Christmas Cheer Board or Winnipeg Harvest. If you want to support one of the organizations in particular, just put the name in the memo line.

Do you hear that sound?

Yep, it's the sound of pennies clinking together like sleigh bells, which can only mean one thing.

It's Pennies from Heaven time again.

In fact, it's the 15th year the Winnipeg Free Press' annual campaign has 'coin' rolled around to aid our local hungry during this holiday season through the Christmas Cheer Board and Winnipeg Harvest.

After months of economic ups and downs, for many people in our community the humble penny may be what brings them joy this year.

And, beginning this Friday, thanks to a local philanthropist who wishes to remain anonymous, we have a special 'art' feature for this year's campaign. But more on that a bit later.

Last year's campaign, launched just as the country and the world were sliding into a recession, wasn't immune from the downturn. We were able to raise about $85,000 when normally we're closer to $100,000.

The fundraising campaign to help our local hungry relies in large part on the children and youth in our community. That's one reason it pleases me that my daughters Sarah and Mary are featured in the campaign and on our poster.

Many of those coins come from the massive campaign held by all the students and staff in the Louis Riel School Division. You might not see angel wings on their backs, but trust me, they are there. They brought in about 20 per cent of our entire total last year.

But it still means in the past 14 years our community angels have helped us raise about $935,000 in total.

And we're hoping to crack the million dollar mark this year.

The beauty of the campaign -- founded by former Free Press editor Mike Ward, and carried on through the years by Lindor Reynolds and Gordon Sinclair before the coin wrappers were passed to me three years ago -- is that any child, no matter how young, can donate a penny. It could be the penny they find on the sidewalk. Or the penny they received as change when they bought a candy.

But the campaign is also helped by the big people in our community, the adults who send us cheques in the mail or stuff bills into the drop-off bins.

To give our campaign a boost, an anonymous benefactor has allowed Pennies to bring East Coast painter Holly Carr to Winnipeg on Friday so she can be inspired by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra to create an original piece of artwork on silk for our campaign. Please call the WSO box office at 949-3999 to join us there.

Then, for the next few weeks, we will encourage people to bid for the work, with the highest bidder winning the artwork. Two days later, in Brandon, Carr will again perform with the symphony to create another masterpiece. We're working to hold an auction for that work, with a Brandon soup kitchen as the beneficiary.

We'll give you full details when the bidding starts, but we'll save that for after Carr's performance.

We're hoping it will be like our past successful auctions, including last year's when we auctioned off the chance to have Juno-award winning Christian singer Steve Bell perform in your living room, and the year before when two lucky ladies won the chance to get on stage for a few songs with Bon Jovi at the MTS Centre.

Some works of art from Carr, the daughter-in-law of wildlife painter Robert Bateman, will be showing for the next few weeks at the Birchwood Gallery in Winnipeg.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 7, 2009 A12

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