{"id":26745,"date":"2020-06-11T23:59:08","date_gmt":"2020-06-12T03:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26745"},"modified":"2020-06-12T00:03:21","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T04:03:21","slug":"stouffville-contracting-company-raises-10000-for-welcoming-arms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/stouffville-contracting-company-raises-10000-for-welcoming-arms\/","title":{"rendered":"Stouffville contracting company raises $10,000 for Welcoming Arms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The team at Powell Contracting is a competitive one. They\nlike to challenge each other and spur each other on \u2013 and this competitive\nstreak has paid dividends for Aurora\u2019s Welcoming Arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, the Whitchurch-Stouffville-based business\npresented Welcoming Arms volunteers with a cheque for $10,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The money will be used by the ecumenical organization to\nsupport their weekly meal programs \u2013 Welcome Table and Martha\u2019s Table \u2013 as well\nas their Bridging the Gap program, which provides assistance to Aurora\u2019s most\nvulnerable residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had the resources and energy to do something\ninternally here at Powell Contracting, but we didn\u2019t know where to focus our\nenergy,\u201d says Phil Breault, Sustainability Manager at Powell. \u201cWe reached out\nto Mayor Tom Mrakas and, through some guidance, he pointed us in a couple of\ndirections. After doing some research, we fell onto Welcoming Arms as the\ncharity we wanted to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have a fairly large office with a lot of employees\nand some of them are actually fairly familiar with the program, and it has\neither helped them through somebody they knew or somebody closer. Just the fact\nit was a very rooted program that has been helping people in need for a while\nnow really resonated with us and that is why we chose them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team set out on a four-week fundraiser. Through\ngames, activities and challenging each other, they were able to raise $5,000,\nwith a further matching donation from Powell itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have a pretty competitive nature just in the staff\nthat we have,\u201d explains Breault. \u201cWe ran tallies week over week and kind of had\na game to see who was in the lead, then we challenged each division to try to\nbeat one another. It was a friendly competition that played to our competitive\nsides.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This commitment only intensified as they learned more\nabout the work Welcoming Arms does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the outset, Breault says they were focused on helping get\nat least one of their three core programs back up and running. As a result of\nCOVID-19, they had to scale back their operations and the Powell team wanted to\nhelp them get back up to speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur objective was to bring at least one back, but in an\nideal world all of those programs would be back online,\u201d he says. \u201cSpeaking for\nmyself, I was very excited and motivated to generate as much as possible. As\nthe numbers came in, we were extremely excited. We shared updates in our weekly\nnewsletter to staff, kept them engaged and focused, building on that sense of\ncompetition \u2013 but also the sense of pride by helping such a strong community\nprogram. It was awesome to see week over week the numbers keep going up and the\nentire staff is very proud.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And they were very proud to welcome the Welcoming Arms\nteam to their business last Monday to hand over the funds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want to thank all of the staff who participated \u2013 we\ntook this to heart,\u201d says Breault. \u201cWe\u2019re very proud of everything that we have\ndone and being able to help out Welcoming Arms. We would like to thank them\nbecause they have been great to work with and we\u2019d also like to thank the Mayor\nand Councillor Sandra Humfryes who joined us and is a proponent of Welcoming\nArms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody is sitting back a little bit in these pretty\nuncertain times, but if I had anything to suggest [for other companies to\nchallenge their employees in supporting a community group at this time], it\nwould be: just try it. I think a huge hurdle is actually taking the first step\nin doing something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have similar challenges in our organization, a lot of people have opinions, but there is a difference between an opinion and an idea. Craft an idea. Most of the ideas we\u2019re working from are employee-led or suggested, so we have a very easy one-page template to get an idea going, then we vet that through our committee of about four individuals. My suggestion is simply to just do it, try it; stop talking about it and actually put some pen to paper.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The team at Powell Contracting is a competitive one. They like to challenge each other and spur each other on \u2013 and this competitive streak has paid dividends for Aurora\u2019s Welcoming Arms. Last week, the Whitchurch-Stouffville-based business presented Welcoming Arms volunteers with a cheque for $10,000. The money will be used by the ecumenical organization […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/2020-06-11-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6Xn","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 19:25:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}