While donations are still being counted, the 2011 MCC Festival Auction and Relief Sale, combined with the Festival of Praise, has already raised more than $609,000.
“We are so grateful for the generous hearts of those who came and gave. We are grateful for all the volunteers who came, we absolutely could not do it without their help,” said Dora Hoeppner, coordinator of the event.
The relief sale, held Sept. 9-10 at Tradex, and the Festival of Praise, held Sept. 11 at Emmanuel Mennonite Church, raised funds to help people in Africa living with HIV/AIDS.
Thousands of people attended the weekend event.
The main auction on Saturday morning began with the traditional, symbolic auctioning of a loaf of bread which sold for more than $100,000 from a multitude of bidders.
Fraserway RV – which has been supporting the MCC Festival for 20 years – had three units at the sale this year, allowing the bidder to choose the vehicle they preferred. The successful bidder paid $16,000 and went home with a new RV.
The quilt auction, which is always a highlight, raised $22,850 with the two highest selling quilts bringing in $6,800. The most unique quilt sold has not even been made yet. The quilters decided to auction a “Custom Quilt” with the winning bidder choosing the colour, pattern and size. It sold for $2,300 and was matched by a generous donor for a total of $4,600.
Other sources of funds included 44 cyclists who participated in the Pedaling for Hope cyclathon and raised more than $65,000, as well as the Penny Power booth which collected and rolled thousands of pennies during the weekend. The coin drive this year supported food security projects in Sudan. Donations to Penny Power are matched 4-1 by the Canadian International Development Agency through the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
You can learn more about MCC’s Generations project when you visit aids.mcc.org.
By the numbers:
A big part of the MCC festival is food sales. This year’s event saw 18,000 vereniki (cottage cheese perogies) consumed, 87 pounds of butter used to make the cream sauce to go with them, 2,900 pounds of farmer sausage sold, and 400 pounds of raisins used to make portzelky (raisin fritters).
The event also included foods from Africa, Japan, India, and Latin America, reflecting the ethnic diversity of the Mennonite community.