Sunrise Way Has Hosted its Biggest Fundraising Event

of the year


Article heading image for Sunrise Way Has Hosted its Biggest Fundraising Event

Mayor Paul Antonio with Sunrise Way graduate Justin Heal

Sunrise Way hosted its biggest fundraising event of the year on Saturday night, June 2. 

CEO Wendy Agar said Sunrise Way is committed to helping individuals living with addiction develop skills and strategies to live a healthy purposeful life.

“We provide an essential service to the community and are not fully funded, so fundraising events like Saturday night’s dinner are an important part of our activities,” Ms Agar said.

“We’re so grateful to everyone who came along on the night to support us.  They bought raffle tickets, bid for auction items, and most importantly learned a little more about Sunrise Way.

“I’d like to particularly thank our MC Cr James O’Shea, our fundraising committee, all the businesses that donated items, and our brave panelists who shared their stories.”

Ms Agar said raising awareness around Sunrise Way was very important to her.

“For those of us who haven’t experienced addiction ourselves, or seen it consume the life of a loved one, I think it can be hard to understand what it is like.  At the event, attendees had the privilege of hearing from people who have experienced both, combined with some clinical insight – with our panel of graduate Justin, parent of a current Sunrise Way resident, Bob, and our Rehab Leader Carla providing important insights,” she said. 

“With both our Resilience Breakfast which was held earlier in the year, and this dinner – it’s so rewarding when people come up to us afterwards, affected by the stories of our graduates and their families.  These people have become our advocates out in the community.”

Ms Agar said the event was also a celebration of the vision and resourcefulness of the founding volunteers, the Sunrise Way board, and of the huge amount of support the facility gets from across the community.  She also took the opportunity to thank her team at Sunrise Way.

“My team works above and beyond to get the outcomes for each individual in our care.  Every one of them are passionate about what they do.”

Special guest performer Dave Hughes brought the laughs to the night.

“Everyone was looking forward to seeing Hughesy – he got some great laughs on the night, and had a line-up of people wanting to meet him.  There will be a lot of selfies out there on social media at the moment!  We’re so happy he could come along.”

 

Sunrise Way fundraising team + MC got with Dave Hughes before he took to the stage  –  (l-r) Katie Sedl, Emily O’Sullivan, Kristen O’Brien, Diane Balke, James O’Shea and Wendy Agar with special guest performer Dave Hughes (front). 

 Missed something? Catch up here!

 

5 June 2018




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