Hey Brockville...it's time for a major Pep Rally!

If all you had to do to help a friend earn $150,000, no strings attached, was to vote on-line once per day for 15 days, would you do it? Of course you would, because the reward is so great in relation to the time invested.

Did you know there is an insurance company that is giving away $1,000,000 to the several ideas for community improvement that show the most enthusiastic support? Wouldn't it feel good to get money from an insurance company just because...? An insurance company that wants to give back to the community is also worthy of support.

Hundreds of groups across the country have submitted their ideas to the Aviva Community Fund. One of the great ideas is right here in our community and we need the support of the whole community to push this idea to the forefront. Click on the yellow banner in the sidebar to the right to go to the Aviva Community Fund website and read about the idea submitted by the Friends of Thousand Islands Secondary School.

As you may know, the finest of Ontario's high school track and field stars will be competing for gold this June at the 2012 OFSAA Track & Field Meet here in Brockville at the recently updated track & field facility at TISS. This is the largest event to be hosted at TISS to date. You may also know that the lack of seating does not reflect the rest of this state-of-the-art facility. We need to increase the seating to accommodate not only this upcoming OFSSA event, but all other community events that take place at this location; events like the Brockville Bowl, the Kinsmen-Hungerford Meet, the Terry Fox event, the Senior games and minor league football to name a few.

A recent Brockville Bowl event at BCI illustrating the size of crowds attending this event.
TISS hosts this event every second year. This kind of crowd deserves more bleacher seating at the TISS facility.

The cost of the new bleacher seats is approximately $200,000. We must buy these bleachers regardless of where the money comes from. With enough supporting votes from the community, the Aviva Community Fund will take care of up to $150,000 of this expense.


And here's the best part...the more money we can get from Aviva, the less we have to ask from the community in the way of donations. So, which would you rather do, register on the Aviva website to vote on-line once per day for 15 days (approximately 15 minutes of your time in total) or open your wallet when the fundraisers come knocking on your door?


Let me just put a little challenge out to you Brockville.
The little community of Nunavut, population around 5000, has already made it as a semifinalist for the same category in which we are competing because they tallied almost 10,000 votes in Round 1 of this challenge. We were only able to log just shy of 3,800 votes. Really Brockville?! Are we going to stand back and let a tiny little community, with only one fifth of our population, take this from us? We have a second chance to show Canada and Aviva that Brockville cares about its community. This just isn't for TISS, this is for the whole Thousand Islands regional community. And we need the whole community to make this happen.


Voting for Round 2 of the Aviva Community Fund Challenge starts Monday, October 24th and ends November 9th. That's 17 days to cast your 15 votes, one per day. Please go to the Aviva Registration page to register your email address and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE! Use all 15 of your votes.. You get 15 votes per registered email address. Share this with all your friends and family using email, Facebook, Twitter, whatever. Let's get the word out...everywhere...and FAST!


Let's go Brockville. Let's show Aviva that we are worthy of hosting the best in the province with the best facilities possible.
Please VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!


Sincerely,
Marilynn Wykes

~Born in Brockville
~Former user of TISS track facilities
~Sister to 2 TISS teachers
~Friend to several TISS teachers
~Admirer of TISS and its reputation for fostering athletic excellence in its students
~Head cheerleader in the quest to get free money from the insurance company in the Aviva Community Challenge
~Resident of Burlington, Ontario