On Saturday, October 24th, more than 300 community and business leaders from Vancouver’s South Asian community came together to help purchase an urgently-needed heart-lunch machine for the BC Children’s Hospital.
Attendees who attended enjoyed cocktails while bidding on the silent auction, a programme including speeches from Robin Dhir, Robin Gill and Kash Heed as well as plenty of opportunities to raise money in the live auction. In the end, the event raised over $78,000 and for a first-time gala event being held for the South Asian community, it was a huge success.
Catch the release and see more photos, after the jump.
More photos:
The post-event release:
A Night of Miracles Gala Raises $78,606!
BC’s South Asian community once again demonstrates it’s dedication to child health by beating a lofty goal of $65,000 for the inaugural A Night of Miracles Gala and raising $78,606 for BC Children’s Hospital.
The event, which took place Saturday, October 24, 2009 at the Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle Downtown Hotel, was attended by members of BC’s South Asian community dressed to the nines in black-tie and gala dresses.
Emcee, Robin Gill of Global BC took special care to acknowledging the community’s tremendous generosity and giving history to Children’s Hospital through their annual telethon and other community events. Over the past decade, the South Asian community has raised more than $2.5 million in support of child health, helping to fund programs, training and equipment purchases at BC Children’s Hospital, Sunny Hill Health Centre for Children and the Child & Family Research Institute.
Inspired by this trend of excellence, long-time volunteers identified a new opportunity to engage BC’s South Asian community. A Night of Miracles is anticipated to attract more than 300 influential community and business leaders. With support from key members in the community and corporate sponsors, the event and BC’s South Asian community are poised to make miracles happen for BC’s kids.
A Night of Miracles fundraising is supporting the purchase of a new ECMO Machine.
If you lie still in a quiet room you quickly become aware of two things: the steady rise and fall of your chest with each breath, and the gentle, rhythmic beating of your heart. We take these motions for granted. Yet, should either cease, so too does life.
At BC Children’s Hospital, the province’s only full-service pediatric acute-care hospital, a single piece of equipment with a complex name performs the vital role of sustaining life when the heart or lungs would otherwise fail. The Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation machine referred to at the hospital as ECMO, is often the only thing that stands between life and death for infants and children experiencing cardio-respiratory failure.
Four-year-old Aamir
This serious condition claims many lives each year. The ECMO machine, however, can act as a child’s heart and lungs for several weeks while those vital organs recover. Simply put, ECMO saves lives.Four-year-old Aamir remembers nothing of the 11 days he spent on the ECMO machine as he recovered from lifesaving cardiac surgery when he was just a few months old. His parents, on the other hand, will never forget the role BC Children’s Hospital, its staff and even this complex piece of machinery played in allowing their son to become the healthy child he is today.
For more information about A Night of Miracles, please contact:
Aaron Sanderson
Philanthropy Coordinator
BC Children’s Hospital Foundation
P: 604-875-2511
Tags: Fundraiser, West Hastings Street