11th annual Care from the Heart Radio-a-thon goes Thursday

The 11^th annual event takes place this Thursday, February 13 from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Personalities from local radio stations, including All Hits B-93 and Today’s Country 95.5, will be on-site at the Chinook Regional Hospital (CRH) to speak with doctors, nurses and members of the CRH community.

Stories will be shared in an effort to raise funds for the CRH Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving services at the Lethbridge hospital.

“The [radio-a-thon] is when the community comes together and all of us, whether we’re businesspeople, whether we’re private people, everybody in southern Alberta, at some point in time, is going to use the hospital. Sometimes you want to and sometimes you don’t, but we’re going to end up in the hospital,” said Bob Balog, honorary chair of Care from the Heart Day.

“We have one of the great hospital facilities anywhere in the country and we continue every year to try and make it better and that’s what this is all about.”

Jason VandenHoek, executive director of the CRH Foundation, said the goal is to raise $250,000 on event day, with funds focused towards the mental health area at the hospital.

“Our goal is to raise as much as we can and just to help us along with the renovations and the redevelopment of that [mental health] area that we’re currently in the middle of,” he told LNN.

The first two phases of the redevelopment project for the mental health area have been completed, with the third and final phase set to begin soon.

VandenHoek explained that there are many ways people can give to the cause.

“People would have received a mailer in their mailboxes a couple of weeks ago, so lots of those funds have already started coming in that way,” he said.

“On event day, we encourage people to go onto our website, crhfoundation.ca to make a gift; they can give us a call at 403-388-6001 or they can come right down to the hospital to the atrium and have a visit with their favourite local radio personality and make their donation in person.”

Balog said it’s a pleasure to see so many people get involved.

“We are so very pleased that all the folks from the radio community come and give us a hand and we are appreciative on so many people on the donations that we get throughout the community and this is what we’re working for, is to make our hospital the best we can possibly make it,” he remarked.

“The good thing about the telethon is that all the money that we raise here stays here and that’s a very important aspect of what goes on here.”

Balog is a staple in the southern Alberta community – his family operates Balog Auction Services and he’s been involved with the CRH Foundation for many years.

“We’ve been in this community for a long, long time now and our philosophy from the first time we started our business in 1980 is [that] if you’re part of a community, you belong and you give to that community and that’s the way that my mom and my dad brought me up and that’s the way our family feels and we just want to be helpful wherever we can and for the last 10 years, we hope that we’ve been of some asset to helping this cause get a little bit better as we go,” he told LNN.

Balog Auction will host a special Care from the Heart auction Wednesday, February 12 in support of the foundation and radio-a-thon.

According to the CRH Foundation, over $2 million has been raised over the years through the Care from the Heart Radio-a-thon.

by Justin Goulet

11th annual Care from the Heart Radio-a-thon goes Thursday

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