On July 5th, Sorento Custom Homes along with all of their trades, suppliers and volunteers began building the fifth annual Build a Kid to Cure home. This is the home that the crews are challenged to build in 30 days or less (the 2010 house was build in only 23 days!), that the team builds to benefit local charities and also funds oncology research for children’s cancer and has committed $300,000 to Red Deer’s Ronald McDonald House.
The kickoff to the event was held on July 5th at the house which is being constructed at 347 Webster Dr. in Westlake, Red Deer.
By the time we got there, noon of the first day, the crews had the main floor built and the walls already to go as well. By the time we left, all the walls were lifted and in place!
A remarkable feat, of which many wonder how this can actually happen when it usually takes four to six months to build a house.
What you don’t see is the countless hours spent behind the scenes to ensure that the build goes according to plan, and this is a supreme effort put on by the amazing Sorento Custom Homes team, their trades, suppliers and the volunteers along with the board of directors that also organizes the Golf a Kid to Cure.
For the past nine years, we’ve held a golf tournament with silent auction and this’ll be the fifth year for the Home Build.
In the nine years running we’ve raised over $1 million and have funded many local charities, and committed hundreds of thousands of dollars to childhood oncology research and most recently the Ronald McDonald House.
Every day in Alberta 46 kids are diagnosed with some form of cancer, a one-third of them lose their battle. That’s 16 kids every day that get diagnosed with something that they won’t survive. That’s just about 6,000 kids a year that perish to cancer and that’s just in Alberta alone.
Think about that for a moment! What if one of them was yours?
We’ve all been affected by cancer in some way shape or form, we all know someone that hasn’t survived cancer.
But if it was your child, what would you do? What could you do?
I know I couldn’t imagine that feeling.
A couple of years ago we had the Wildeboer family present at the golf tournament. They are in their early thirties with a young family, and about nine months prior to the golf tournament they had lost their one and a half-year-old Nathanial to cancer…he was born only a couple of weeks after my son Hudson, and it didn’t sit well with me at all.
I can’t imagine the devastating pain they went through and are still struggling with.
As many of you are aware we’ve got a huge undertaking coming to Red Deer, the Ronald McDonald House. Last year, I spoke about my best friend Robert Campeau that past away shortly after he turned 18 from the same affliction that Terry Fox had, and because of the family living so far away in Bonnyville, they had used the Ronald McDonald house in Edmonton as their headquarters for battling his cancer.
I spoke with his mother Evelyn at length about the Ronald McDonald house and she keeps them in high regard and dear to her heart.
As always, we on the board of directors invite everyone to go and cheer these guys on, as they are all working very hard to get it done in time.
I suggest that you watch from across the street, as you may get knocked over from the crews coming and going from the house!
Jean-Guy Turcotte is an Accredited Mortgage Professional with his partners at Regional Mortgage Corporation and is also a Director on the Board for the Golf and Build a Kid To Cure Charity. To inquire about sponsorship opportunities for 2011, feel free to contact Jean-Guy at 403-343-1125 or email to Jturcotte@regionalmortgage.ca.
