The Coldest Night of the Year 2021 has raised over $65,000 for Streets Alive Mission so far (Photo provided by Streets Alive Mission)

By Justin Goulet

Coldest Night of the Year raises over $65,000 for Streets Alive Mission

Feb 23, 2021 | 10:40 AM

COALDALE, AB – Saturday marked the Coldest Night of the Year in Coaldale.

The annual charitable walk took place on February 20, hosted by Lethbridge-based Streets Alive Mission at the Land-O-Lakes Golf & Country Club.

Streets Alive’s director of fund development, Jennifer Lepko, said the organization coordinated with Coldest Night of the Year representatives and Alberta Health Services to ensure a COVID-safe in-person walk.

“We were actually the only site in Western Canada to do an in-person event,” she told Lethbridge News Now.

“We worked with Alberta Health Services and they were able to help us make sure that we had all the restrictions and guidelines followed and that everybody was safe, so it was a COVID-friendly event, which was exciting to be able to actually host that in-person piece.”

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The initial goal when first setting up the 2021 walk was to raise $24,000. However, Lepko said funds started to come in quickly, so they raised their goal to $40,000. Last year, the fundraiser brought in $48,000.

As of this writing, $65,284 has been raised, with funds still coming in.

Lepko added that the virtual portion of the walk has been extended until the end of March.

The virtual aspect allows people to register and raise money for the cause on their own, while enjoying a walk in their own neighborhood or wherever they’d like.

“I’m pretty confident that this amazing community is going to bring us over the $70,000 mark this year, which is the highest ever and in a residual COVID year, it’s pretty darn exciting. We have an amazing community,” she said.

People can donate online here. Lepko added donations can also be made in person via cheque or cash at Streets Alive Mission’s office in Lethbridge.

As for what the donations will be used for, she explained they’ll help with the work of Streets Alive’s outreach team and to providing food for those in need.

“Making sure that people that are on the street have a connection and they have resources, they have food, they have a ride to somewhere warm – making sure that anybody who is struggling or hungry or cold, is taken care of.”

Roughly 180 people signed up for the in-person portion of Coldest Night of the Year. Lepko explained that instead of having everyone walk around Land-O-Lakes at the same time as they had done in years past, half-hour time slots were set up to ensure walkers were spaced out properly and numbers followed provincial health guidelines.

The event started at 10 a.m. on Saturday and lasted until 4 p.m.

Multiple participants who could not be at the walk in-person signed up for the virtual portion of the event. In total, Streets Alive’s Coldest Night of the Year had 247 walkers.

“Our highest-ever prior to this was 161, so we’ve had a huge number step up to participate in this amazing event that we hadn’t had in the past, so it’s pretty amazing,” Lepko remarked to LNN.

She thanked all of the event’s sponsors, participants, volunteers and AHS.

“We reached out to Alberta Health Services and they were more than willing to help us come up with a plan to make sure that we could run this event in person. They were amazing as well.”

More on the work of Streets Alive Mission is available here.