Vancouver Kids Walk for Help Phone 2011, help break the silence.

Each year, seven million of us experience mental illness. Many can’t get help as most of the needed public services are delivered piecemeal or they fall outside of medicare. It's tragic, since hardly anyone is untouched by the problem. And yet, here we are in 2011, with not enough attention or resources directed to mental health issues because they are still so shrouded with embarrassment and fear.  And youth are especially vulnerable for they are the most silent victims of all. Research shows that while the majority of mental disorders are treatable, only a fraction of young people recieve any type of mental health care.

This is where Kids Help Phone comes in, for they have given children a voice by giving them a line to someone who will care and listen. Since their phone lines went live in May 1989, Kids Help Phone’s professional counsellors have been providing help and hope to young people in every community. No matter what the problem, Kids Help Phone is there 24 hours a day, 365 days a year with caring, professional support for young people from five to 20 who reach out for help.

And now they need our help.

On Sunday May 1st people from over 40 comunities across Canada will be walking for Kids Help Phone.    By participating in this walk we help break the silence on mental health.

Lushious 

This year will be my third year participating in the walk. The first year I walked with with Team Yummy as part of the west coast Yummy Mummy Club. The second year I entertained the crowd with a band of musicians assembled from members of the League of Rock.  And this year I've asked some of my friends from Lushious band to join me onstage and we are very much looking forward to contributing to this important fundraiser. I'm also hoping you will come down and support the festivities or even better,  put together a team, collect some donations and do the lovely 5K walk around the golf course at Langara. The event is a terrific family affair with snacks, games, contests, bouncy castles, facepainting, balloons, radio stations, fitness clubs, booths, celebs, music and much more.

And if you can't make it please tune into CTV who will be there covering the event, and do check out the website  if something about this moves you to take a part and help, you will find ways you can donate or help sponsor a team.

                                                                        

            Below you can click the pictures to visit some of the Kids Walks corporate sponsors. We thank them for their dedication to breaking the silence.

Rach xo

Walk for Kids Help Phone, 2010

           Kids Walk for Help Phone

On May 2nd I was privileged to sing for the Kids Walk for Help Phone. The Walk for Kids Help Phone takes place annually in more than 50 communities across Canada and is an essential service for children in need. Every day, Kids Help Phone counsellors answer calls and online questions from across Canada. No matter what the problem or concern our counsellors are there to provide immediate and caring support, information and referrals to the kids who reach out.

  

Together volunteers and participants across the country raised over 2.5 million dollars.
Thought I would post some pics and a video of Vancouver's event.

                            The Beat 94.5fm Street Team!







As the featured perfomer I thought it might be a great idea to ask some of the members of the League of Rock to be my band, so I put together a group made up of both present and past members and they did a tremendous job! We started playing at 9:30am while people milled about visiting the sponsor tents and filled out their registration forms.

So we played and we rocked and had a great deal of  fun and then CTV's Jason Pires got up to lead the announcements and kick off the walk.  He introduced speakers from Bell Canada and Ledcor who were there to give thanks and considerations to the many people and companies who helped put this all together. Boston Pizza came up to present a $250,000 check that was being donated nationwide. West Jet made a draw for free tickets, and then a group of energetic folks from the Steve Nash Sports club ran the crowd through a warm up before sending everyone off on their walk for good. 

As the crowd began their journey my friend the very talented Roger Schmidt  who has a newly released album you can check out by clicking on his name,  came up onstage and played his music for the VIPs, and crowd who were not walking in the event but were still there to support/donate and take part in the tent activities and BBQ.

There are plenty of people to thank for this day, all the sponsors and contributors can be seen here on the signboard below. I want to thank the L.O.R. members  for getting up early to come and shine for this event as well as Sharylin Boshaw for coming to take the wonderful photos and finally, I'll  send a shout out to Rocky Mountain sound for doing a great job at making us sound so great. The Vancouver event raised over $135,000 of the 2.5 million national total and we all have reason to be proud.

Rach xo