Spring is here!!

I love this time of year when the valley starts to wake up from its winter slumber!

The home show season got off to a great start with a fun couple of days at the Kelowna show held at Prospera Place. We could hardly keep up with the demand for 50/50 tickets and the chip sheet raffle. Thanks to the fabulous support this was a $16,000 weekend. A new experience for us was attending the Kelowna Airport Travel Show, this popular event was held in the beautiful KF Centre for Excellence and our 50/50 was a hit with visitors. This is a fabulous location offering a unique experience to learn about the history of the airport as well as see the aircraft on display.

There are many more events coming up and volunteers make it possible for us to attend all these community engagement opportunities. To help us to improve our planning we are sharing our schedule for the next 2 months. If you are interested in having fun and helping us to build more homes, please sign up, your help is very appreciated.

This month our volunteer spotlight is on Canada’s Best Deck And Rails. In a very short time Landon and his team have made a huge impact with their support for Habitat, including supplying and installing the decks and rails on our current project. We are delighted and very grateful to have their support.

Many of you know that we regularly hold bottle drives throughout the year and these have been a successful way to raise funds. The next one will be a little bit different. We are also going to be collecting unwanted books to fill ReStore our shelves. With costs for new books increasing, demand is out pacing our supply and the ReStore stock has been depleted, which is no wonder as we offer reused books starting at $1.50!! If you have refundable bottles/cans and books to donate please stop by the Kelowna and West Kelowna stores on the 6th April 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

There has been a flurry of activity at the build site. We are in the process of installing the kitchens, trim and interior doors and have completed priming walls. A big thank you to all the volunteers that have been involved in these activities, we can’t possibly make this happen with your support.

I recently participated in the Canadian Home Builders Home Sweet Home Summit along with Julia Deans, President and CEO of Habitat Canada who was the keynote speaker. The summit brought together experts from various sectors to focus on how we can make home ownership more attainable in our community. There were some very engaging conversations and I was thrilled that Habitat Okanagan and Canada were invited to share the work we are doing locally and across the country.

Andrea Manifold
CEO Habitat Okanagan