STAY CONNECTED: Have the stories that matter most delivered every night to your email inbox. Subscribe to our daily local news wrap.
The 2020 Rotary Dream Home (Supplied)
Rotary Dream Home Lottery

Rotary Dream Home Lottery donating 50% of April ticket sales to Grande Prairie Food Bank

Apr 1, 2020 | 5:30 AM

The 27th Rotary Dream Home Lottery, in partnership with the Rotary Club of Grande Prairie, is helping out the Grande Prairie Food Bank during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Wednesday, the Dream Home Lottery announced that they will donate 50% of their ticket sales for the month of April to the Grande Prairie Food Bank.

“You have to change with the times, and while the dream home has been very successful over the years, we realized that you have to reflect the needs of the community,” said Kevin Hilgers with the Rotary Dream Home Lottery.

Since the pandemic was announced a few weeks ago, the Food Bank has seen an increase in demand and their supply has gone bare.

“The club got together and said, ‘what can we do now?’ The idea came up to put together this COVID-19 rapid relief fund. Fifty percent of all dream home sales in April will go towards that fund,” said Hilgers. “The idea is not to take months or weeks, but so this money can get into those Food Banks within days.”

Hilgers mentioned that the lottery doesn’t have a specific goal in place for how much they want to raise, but they are hoping to raise as much as they can to help benefit the Food Bank.

Tickets for the Dream Home Lottery are valued between $100 and $800 depending on how many of them you buy.

With the Rotary Club teaming up with the Dream Home, the club has already set a goal of fundraising $100,000 for the Food Bank. This sum of money would help ensure the Food Bank can help stay stocked until the fall.

Up for grabs in the lottery is this year’s dream home in Taylor Estates worth 1.4 million dollars, and a cash jackpot 50-50 that is currently sitting at over $300,000.

Tickets for the lottery can be found on their website.

This year’s proceeds raised go to benefit many other programs in Grande Prairie.

These programs include the GPFC Aboriginal Head Start, Dansconnection Parent Group, Grande Prairie Curling Centre, Canadian Parents for French, Grande Prairie & District Pipes & Drums, Gladiators Martial Arts Academy, Ecole St. Gerard Playground Fundraising Society, Grande Prairie Skating Club, Grande Prairie Wrestling Club, Nitehawk Alpine Ski Team, PARDS and Sexsmith Tumbling Club.

If you cannot buy a ticket for the lottery and want to help out, you can donate to the Food Bank at the Salvation Army’s website.

The Food Bank is asking for monetary only donations at this time, as they can work with grocery stores on getting food hampers created.