{"id":3507,"date":"2013-08-14T14:56:37","date_gmt":"2013-08-14T18:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=3507"},"modified":"2013-08-21T15:46:40","modified_gmt":"2013-08-21T19:46:40","slug":"aurora-aims-for-grand-slam-in-dragon-boat-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-aims-for-grand-slam-in-dragon-boat-race\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora aims for \u201cgrand slam\u201d in dragon boat race"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeff Doner<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Town of Aurora is raring to go for the tenth annual Dragon Boat Festival for United Way at Seneca College, King Campus this Saturday. <\/p>\n

The Aurora team, along with numerous others from neighboring municipalities and corporations, will not only vie for top spot, but also to raise funds for the United Way\u2019s signature event of the year.<\/p>\n

The event is used to kick off the United Way\u2019s fundraising campaign and this year will draw close to 30 teams and up to 1,000 people.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been another phenomenal year,\u201d said Neil Garbe, CAO for Aurora. \u201cFirstly, we have a friendly competition among the municipalities, which we won last year, so we\u2019re pretty excited about defending our title again this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

All competition aside, Garbe said the Aurora staff is thrilled to once again be taking part in the event. It will be his second time competing in the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fantastic, not only to support a great cause, but also to team-build and have some fun at the same time,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of fun and a hard workout. I think you go full steam for about three minutes sprinting, but it\u2019s a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garbe said staff came up with the idea to join the Dragon Boat Festival, so they got together, found sponsors and put an 18-person team together. So far they have raised $4,600 over the last two years, with more still to come from this campaign. <\/p>\n

Garbe said the money was raised from local corporate sponsors as well as internally through small events, like selling ice cream on Fridays.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of our participation is to actually build awareness among our staff about the United Way, which leads into our big campaign in the fall when we are asking for donations from our staff as part of a bigger campaign for the United Way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the competition is all in good fun, Garbe said Team Aurora will be looking to beat out the other municipalities in the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying for the grand slam here!\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cWe\u2019ve won the Public Works Challenge and we won the Southlake Run Challenge and now we\u2019re going for the dragon boat challenge and we\u2019re hoping to retain our title from there. We\u2019ve got a good streak going here, which just proves the superiority of Aurora staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Garbe was quick to point out that the Dragon Boat Festival is about much more than winning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a number of things that the Dragon Boat event fulfills,\u201d he said. \u201cThe United Way uses the Dragon Boat to launch their official campaign goal, so they\u2019ll set their target at what they want to raise among the big campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

United Way York Region serves nine municipalities, including Aurora, East Gwillimbury, Georgina, King, Markham, Newmarket, Richmond Hill, Vaughan and Whitchurch-Stouffville. <\/p>\n

In addition to its traditional role of supporting agencies to meet urgent needs, United Way is working to tackle the root causes of social issues. <\/p>\n

To help strengthen York Region\u2019s quality of life, United Way is uniting people and resources on three priorities: moving people from poverty to possibility, helping kids be all they can be, and building strong neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Town of Aurora is raring to go for the tenth annual Dragon Boat Festival for United Way at Seneca College, King Campus this Saturday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"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":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-Uz","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-18 13:26:23","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\/3507","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=3507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}