The Video that started it all!!!

So I was attending the Royal LePage National Sales Conference this past September here in Halifax and the words on everyone's lips were "Shelter Foundation".  Well being fairly new to the Royal LePage family, I was overwhelmed by the amount of efforts people put out in order to raise money for the Foundation.  Anything from matching donation for a selfie  with a particular agent from the west coast to auctioning off an old beat up faux fur coat that the winning bidder gets the honor to keep until the next Sales Convention where it will be auctioned off again to the next highest bidder.

There was also another buzz going around the convention.  It was about where the next trek would be.  Being new to all this, I had no clue what they were talking about.  Well apparently every 2 years the Shelter foundation organizes the Fund Raising Event called:"Challenge for Shelter Trek".  The first one was a hike up Mont Machu Pichu Picchu in Peru and 2 years later the Icefields of Iceland. So far raising $1.1 Million Dollars.

Then on the last night during the gala, they made this big announcement with drum roll and all.  There is was for all to see, the next Trek was to be in the Sahara Desert.  Here's the video they used to make the announcement:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4-zaDRygKw

This short 2minutes video pulled me right in.  I had to do it!!!!

There only a little hitch.  You have to pay your own way there, Approx. $1500 for airfare and you pay for the Trek itself, $2000.  Oh and you then have to raise a minimum of $5000 for the Foundation.  I knew I could raise the $5K.  Since I never make important decisions without talking it out with my wife first, I now had to go home and tell my lovely wife that I wanted to spend $3500 to fly halfway across the planet to Trek over 100Km in the Sahara Desert to raise money for charity. 

It actually went a lot better than I thought.  First thing Kerry asked was are you paying your own way and all the money goes to the charity?  This is something we both always agreed on that it wouldn't be fair to do a fundraiser and have part of the money raise pay for someone's vacation.  When I told here 100% of the money raised would go to the Foundation, the first thing she said was:"I have no idea why this is your idea of fun but if you want to go I'm behind you on this"

On my next Blog Entry I'll talk about the nerve wrecking process to get picked to go....

Please visit my fundraising webpage and donate generously: www.claudeschallengeforshelter.ca