Tireless volunteer lends his voice to Games

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/07/2017 (3332 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Sachit Mehra is a champion of Winnipeg who works to make it a better place by serving on nine different boards.

The 40-year-old St. Norbert resident, whose family owns East India Company restaurants in Winnipeg and Ottawa, says he wants to see Winnipeg and its residents grow and prosper.

“We’re a great city. We’re growing and we have tremendous things to offer,” Mehra says.

He’ll serve as volunteer spokesman for the Canada Summer Games in Winnipeg, which take place July 28 to Aug. 13.

He has been involved with some of the biggest events in Winnipeg in recent years. He was the director of the 2015 Grey Cup committee, chairman of the national organizing committee for the Liberal Party of Canada’s biennial convention in 2016 and serves as co-chairman for the International Downtown Association AGM, which takes place here in September.

Mehra began volunteering as a teenager, first with the Young Liberals of Manitoba and then as a community representative with the Winnipeg Police Service.

The latter role required taking reports from people if they had an accident or experienced a traumatic event, getting the details and handing it to the constable on duty.

“It was a lot of fun,” Mehra says. “You got to meet all kinds of people from the public, sometimes in not-so-great circumstances, but it was fulfilling because you knew you were helping them get to a better place.”

For Mehra, who is a founding member of Winnipeg Harvest’s Fast and Furious fundraising event, a board member with King’s Park Child Care and past chairman of the Winnipeg Downtown BIZ, it’s exciting to see the results of getting involved.

In addition to volunteering his time bringing big events to Winnipeg, Mehra is passionate about helping local organizations.

For the past decade, he has been one of the organizers of the Masala Mixer, an annual event at East India Company that has raised more than $160,000 for a number of different causes.

The most recent event, held last month, raised more than $65,000 for Marymound.

“The demands on their organization are massive, so it’s nice to be able to help,” Mehra says of the youth social services organization. “You know right away that what you do for them is going to have a real effect on the work they’re doing.”

Mehra doesn’t have a lot of free time, but when he does, he enjoys spending it with his wife, Caroline, and their two teenage sons. He’s also a muscle-car enthusiast, and is working toward earning his pilot’s licence.

He is looking forward to the Canada Summer Games, which start July 28.

Mehra is particularly excited the event reached its volunteer-recruitment goal.

“When I look at the 7,000 volunteers that we’ve been able to bring into the Games, get trained and get accredited,” he says.

“These are skills that they will have for a lifetime and that they will hopefully be able to pass on.”

If you know a special volunteer, please contact aaron.epp@gmail.com.