The Abbey-Palooza charity fundraiser is going online and it's changing its charity direction amid the COVID-19 crisis.
The event, which traditionally involves vendors, baking and raffles, at their Birchaven home in North Bay, has raised more than $40,000 for Juvenile Diabetes research since its inception. It was inspired by 14-year-old Abbey Mason who was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes as a toddler.
"Unfortunately due to COVID-19 we will not be hosting our Annual Abbey-Palooza fundraiser for Juvenile Diabetes," said Amy Hopkins, Abbey's mother.
"However, like diabetes, we will not allow COVID-19 to stop us from achieving our goals. Abbey and I have taken this as an opportunity to give back to the community that has supported us for the past 10 years.
"With the help of our family, friends and the community we have donated close to $50,000 to JDRF over the past 10 years so we decided that this was the perfect opportunity to give back and say 'thank you.' After some discussion and a list of place we would like to support, we chose 'Fuel our Frontliners' because the women organizing the group have been ongoing supporters of Abbey-Palooza as well the frontliners have supported us by donating to our raffle table and showing up the day of the event with surprise donations."
The Fuel our Frontliners program has been gathering donations to support local frontline workers. Each week, organizers choose a specific restaurant they will get the meals from in a way to support both the frontline workers and the restaurants themselves.
"Our intent at the start was that it would just be a small fundraiser this year and if we could just sell Abbey’s homemade items on Facebook at least we would be able to make a small donation to Fuel our Frontliners," said Hopkins.
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She says the support for doing an online version of Abbey-Palooza has been impressive.
"They responded without hesitation and began posting their products on the page with a portion of their sales going to our cause," explained Hopkins.
"Creating an online Abbey-Palooza Gives Back Facebook page was easy not knowing how it would be received was the hard part but it didn’t take long to figure out people were excited that we were still moving forward with the event. A big piece to Abbey-Palooza is the amazing raffle table we offer each year so at the beginning we didn’t think we would be able to offer one online but it didn’t take long for donations to start rolling in. We didn’t think it was fair to ask businesses for donations this year with the economy being hit so hard by COVID-19 but we began getting cash donations to help support the raffle table so we took the cash and gave back to some of the local businesses who have supported us in the past by purchasing gift cards from them to add to the table.
"The hardest part of doing it online was not having our incredible Abbey-Palooza team here with us to share in the excitement of the event...it’s just not the same without them."
Amy says Abbey has been disappointed with having to run the event online, but she has been impressed with the response too.
"What she misses the most is the excitement leading up to the event, the buzz of energy the day of the event and seeing the people come through our home."
The online event will run online until June 18.
"We can’t thank the community enough for the ongoing support and positive feedback," said Hopkins.
"We truly live in one of the most generous communities."
Anyone interested in donating can reach Amy at +17054715184 or [email protected].
