Calendar boys sure to sell out

July's Chris Nichol and October's Wade Ringler show off the 2009 Fire Fighters Calendar in support of One Kids Place.

Members of the North Bay Professional Fire Fighters Association (NBPFFA) are literally taking their shirts off their backs to help out kids in the community.

Once again the fire fighters have rallied to support One Kids Place (OKP) and launched their 2009 ‘On-the-job’ calendar with 100% of the net proceeds from the sale being directed to the capital campaign.

OKP Executive Director Judy Sharpe says she is thrilled to work with the NBPFFA once again and is grateful to association members for supporting the OKP dream right from the beginning.

“The Firefighters came together a few years back and really led the community charge to start fundraising before we were a corporation and building a building,” she states.

“The support was there and they went out and engaged the community, the community was there for them and certainly we anticipate no less this year.”

Chair of the NBPFF Charities Committee Chris Cuthbertson says the committee is thrilled to work with OKP once again and that they made significant changes with the 2009 calendar by the recruiting the help of industry professionals in order to deliver a quality product.

“The last calendar we did was also in partnership with One Kids Place and like Judy was saying it wasn’t something that was organised One Kids Place at that time, but it was something that we knew would be so beneficial to our community,” he explains.

“Again this year with the construction behind us and everything that is going on we thought what a fantastic job to team up again with One Kids Place. Especially as fire fighters ... we are in the community so often and kids are our number one fans and we have the tours all the time and it’s like a parade going down the street whenever we are in the fire truck, so it’s a phenomenal project that we’ve decided to take on as well.”

“The result of teaming up with TWG Communications and Ed Eng Photography it’s been phenomenal compared to the last calendar we’re above and beyond quality, we’ve decided to switch it up a little bit to go with a bit of colour in the calendars and to just have a new look to our calendar and we believe we are going to be selling out this year for sure.

TWG Vice President Theo Margaritis told the crowd that had gathered at the OKP construction site that it was important the calendar be a work of art for people to appreciate as well as feeling good about supporting a cause.

“Obviously calendars are done frequently at all levels of quality, we wanted to make sure we had something that was very tasteful, very elegant and very appropriate for the cause as I mentioned in my announcement earlier we didn’t want it to look like a Sunshine Boy kind of campaign we wanted something very tasteful. “

“The Firefighters were extremely easy to work with, they are not professional models, their time was all volunteer work and it was interesting to see how all of that would work out, but it worked fantastic they were very easy to work with and very accommodating and obviously their work out regiment to get them into this shape was definitely a lot of work so they were defiantly committed to it.”

“Obviously having something thrown together and saying that it is a fundraiser would only have so many legs, so we think at this end for the people that are going to purchase the calendar will have a wonderful product,” he adds.

The calendars are $20 each and will be available for sale at Mattawa Voyageur Days this weekend and then starting August 5th folks can pick them up at local retail outlets.

Sharpe says this fundraising initiative will be a real boost to Campaign Co-Chairs, Dr. Joseph Madden and Scott Clark as they enter the home stretch of the campaign.

“Initially when we launched the capitol campaign we had $6.4 million to raise in the community we now have 2.7 million to raise, so we are seeing the money come in, and the community is certainly showing their generosity through their donations.”

The Calendar Boys are:

January – Ray Godin
February – Pasha Moravskyy
March – Keith Rutledge
April – Chad Ringler
May – Dustin Douglas
June – Derrick Desilets
July – Chris Nichol
August – Robert Olajos
September – Joel Gingras
October – Wade Ringler
November – Joe Zimbalatti
December – Trevor Polesky