HUMBOLDT — Humboldt resident Joe Scheiber led a donation effort that resulted in almost half of the Telemiracle donations from the Humboldt region presented by the Humboldt Kinettes.
Through Scheiber’s effort, $7,024 was raised.
“I sent out an email and I try to get people to open up their wallets,” Scheiber said. “I got the ball rolling but everyone chipped in to help.”
He purchased prizes with his own money and any of his Olymel co-workers who made a donation had a chance to win one of the prizes.
Scheiber believes this encouraged people to donate.
“I wanted to turn it into fun while donating for a good cause,” he said. “A lot of people, if they have to open their wallets, they like to get something back in return, or win. I thought, ‘Well, let’s make this more enticing to get them to open their wallets.’”
Scheiber said the fundraising resulted in some competitiveness in donations between parts of the company. “One tried to outdo the other area.”
Prizes included teddy bears, alcohol, cash and more, with 25 prizes in total.
“I grew up incredibly poor,” Scheiber said. “We only had a quarter and a half of land and eight kids, so we were poor. Now that I do well, every day I wake up with a goal – I’m either going to help someone or some cause, and you know what? More people need to have that attitude.”
He chose Telemiracle to invest his time and money in for two reasons, the first being how many people it can help.
“It’s a Saskatchewan-wide thing, and there is such a diversity of people that can benefit from Telemiracle.”
The second reason is he was inspired by the amount of work the Humboldt Kinettes put into raising donations.
“In 2018 they didn’t have a lot of money and I felt sorry,” Scheiber said. “I thought, ‘These poor ladies, they try so hard and everybody does everything individually. I’m going to help them.’”
That year he raised about a third of the amount of donations from the Humboldt region.
Scheiber said anyone can do it.
“If one person can get the ball rolling, numbers make numbers grow. One person gets one person on board and before you know it you have 20, 40 people that are all working together.”
Telemiracle took place March 2 and 3.
