Panda + Community – August 2016

August ended up being a little bit quieter, which was actually kind of nice for a change of pace.

Team Panda was out at the Big Brothers Big Sisters of St Thomas Elgin Annual Golf Tournament.  We were not the most successful golfers on the course but we had a lot of fun and the weather was fantastic – so we ended up enjoying the walk around the course! 🙂

The Smart Panda (OurOnline.Company) is the title sponsor this year for our local Big Brothers Big Sisters, so it was great to get out and support them as they raised a significant amount of money to put towards their in school mentoring programs and also to support their Big/Little matches. Currently over a hundred kids are getting mentored, and there is no way to ever measure the impact of being involved in a young person’s life as they walk through the challenges of simply being a kid.  At The Smart Panda we work with the theory that you have to have a Trusted Partner (or Mentor) to get you through the challenges.

In the pictures below you will see a helicopter, which was also at the Golf Event and they dropped 2000 golf balls for Big Brothers Big Sisters “Big Ball” Drop.  The ball closest to the hole (or in the hole) won $2000.  The local helicopter training academy does the helicopter drop which is actually pretty cool to watch!

The Rotary Club is gearing up for a busy fall and winter season.  Once the weather starts to get cold we will be back helping Inn-Out-Of-The-Cold serving up great food and helping some very deserving people. The Rotary Club and The Smart Panda will be out working with Christmas Care again this year.  Wade is on the board of Christmas Care this year to help ensure that everybody at Christmas can have a great Christmas.

Just in case you still haven’t donated to the MS Ride – its NOT too late: Didn’t get a chance to Support the Ride?  IT’S NOT TOO LATE:  Click here to Support The Panda!

Until Next Month……

Panda + Community – July 2016

We cooked and Peddled our way through the month of July and had an absolute blast doing so.

The Panda got to celebrate birthday #42 by cycling 154 km (~100 miles) from Grandbend Ontario to London Ontario and back. We are part of team Butt Ugly and we have raised almost $30,000 this year to help end MS.  Currently the entire event has raised 1.16 million with the target being 1.3 million which we will definitely reach once all the dollars are counted.  Thank You, Thank You, Thank You to everybody that supported us out there.

The St Thomas Railway City Rotary Club was out BBQ’n up some awesome hot-dogs and sausages to raise funds for local community projects this month.  A lot of onions and ketchup were dished out making for some very happy customers.  All the funds raised will be going back into the community this year as we gear up to support projects like Inn-Out-Of-The-Cold which helps the homeless in our community survive the winter with food and shelter or the local conservation authority which we have pledged to purchase and plant 100 more mature trees to help the environment and make our wood lots more vibrant and healthy.  The Panda even got put in charge of running the meetings for the upcoming month as our fearless leader got off his bike at the MS ride and jumped on a plane to England to go cycle another couple hundred miles around England (yes – he is crazy).

August we are going to be busy gearing up to support Big Brothers Big Sisters with their annual golf tournament and big-ball drop.  The Smart Panda is a proud supporter of Big Brothers Big Sisters of St Thomas Elgin, because we feel everybody deserves to have an amazing mentor.

Didn’t get a chance to Support the Ride?  IT’S NOT TOO LATE:  Click here to Support The Panda!

Until Next Month……

Panda + Community – June 2016 (Day by Day)

This June has found The Panda really busy with work commitments.  However, a new Rotary year started July 1st, 2016, and The Panda is President-Elect for The St Thomas Railway City Rotary Club.  It is going to be an exciting year learning from our leadership team and getting out and helping the community! We had the change over BBQ which had some great laughs brought to us by the Kids Division and at the end of the month we had an excellent event where St Thomas Railway City Rotary Club member Diane Chantler was sworn in as the District Governor for District 6330.

In case you didn’t read it above in the Message, its Biking Time! Yes that’s right The Panda and the Butt Uglies will be crossing across Southwestern Ontario over a 100 miles of roads to help raise funds to End MS.  Our team was awesome last year in raising more than $50,000.  I can’t wait to see what we can do this year!

Honestly every dollar makes a difference just ask ALS how they did with the ice bucket challenge.  Please support the Panda even if it is just a couple of bucks, we would greatly appreciate it and the sooner we end MS the better!  If they can find anyway to reverse the damage of the disease it will have a great impact on my family, and that is why we ride!

Click here to Support The Panda!

Until Next Month……

Making a difference one tree at a time

This spring has found The Panda out and about doing all sorts of things.  Several events happened with Big Brothers Big Sisters and The St Thomas Railway City Rotary Club of the past 60 days that has helped make a difference in our community.  It is absolutely amazing knowing that the little things we are doing is making a small difference.

April started with the end of the Inn-Out-of-the-Cold program for 2015.2016, our Rotary Club served up a ton of meals and a ton of dishes were washed (and rewashed).

Next we were up in Sarnia at Rotary Training for our Rotary District.  The Panda is really looking forward to being President of our Club in 2017-2018.  We will be putting a huge focus on kids and will hopefully be able to get a new Interact Club up and running , sending out our first exchange student and hopefully receiving our first exchange student from abroad. The training really gets you thinking about how to the message out to the local and international community. Rotary really helps bring the message the “Rotary is here, something good is going to happen.”

Big Brothers Big Sisters of St Thomas Elgin was out serving up hotdogs and sausages at Canadales (an amazing place to get your green thumb – green!).  We served up a ton of great food and made some money to help support all the great programs that help mentor great kids right here in our community. Rotary will be out in July to do the same BBQ! Later this summer Big Brothers Big Sisters will be holding their annual golf tournament and the 2nd Annual Big Ball Drop.  The Smart Panda is honoured to be the title sponsor for these events, and The Panda Team is looking forward to getting the golf clubs out to test our skills on the links! If you are in the area and want to golf – register here! If you would like to find out more about the big ball drop – click here! Interestingly enough myFM which is the local radio station is a title sponsor for Big Brothers Big Sisters and we had to record the commercials for the Golf & Ball Drop, and it turns out that The Panda has a radio voice – who knew.  Maybe that means some podcasts will be in our future.

May started off with Rotary serving up a huge all you could eat Perch dinner to over 300 people.  The Club was able to raise almost $5,000 which will be used to support many great local programs in the upcoming year. Speaking of great programs, earlier this year we had Kettle Creek Conservation Authority come in and speak to The Club and we were able to use $500.00 most of which was given to use from the Rotary Club of London West when they closed last year and we combined that with a 50% matching district grant of $250.00 allowing us to give $750.00 to purchase trees which we planted in a local park right here in St Thomas (actually the park around the corner from The Panda Headquarters). Sixty beautiful trees were planted in the park all of which go towards the count of the Million Tree Challenge.  It was a nice way to segway into The Club’s second birthday last week.

June will find us out getting ready for The Ride to End MS where we will bike 100 miles from Grand Bend to London (and back). We are looking to try to exceed $1000.00 this year, you can donate here!

Until Next Month……

In Like A Lion Out Like A Panda?

March really presented another extremely interesting month of weather for us.  Running in shorts, Biking in heavy gear, and flipflops to toques, you just don’t know what to do.

The good news is we got lots of running in, a little biking, and a lot of great service work.  The most exciting of which was the Curl For Kids Big Brothers Big Sisters event this month.  As we mentioned last month The Smart Panda – OurOnline.company is the title sponsor for Big Brothers Big Sisters St Thomas Elgin this year, and this was the first event where we had our flyers!  Our curling team “Hockey Night in Panada” went out and tried our best, unfortunately we struggled to find our groove, but we had no problem having some fun!  In the end the event raised over 15,000 dollars for Big Brothers Big Sisters so they can run their amazing mentorship programs!  We are truly honoured to be able to partner with such a great organization.

The St Thomas Railway City Rotary Club and The Smart Panda were serving up some hot delicious food at Inn-Out-of-the-Cold this past month.  There is a huge need for support in our community as there are too many people that are struggling to get by, the last time we were out we served a record number of meals for the program.  I challenge everybody out there to just do something to help, it could be a simple gesture of cleaning out the closet and putting some unworn clothing in a bag and donating it, to spending some time helping out a program, to giving a couple of dollars instead of having another coffee, it all makes a difference.

Until Next Month……