United Way Campaign Kicks Off

Goal: Pull Together, Help the Weak

Story by Corinne Saunders

The 2009-10 campaign goal of $600,000 was announced and demonstrated visually during the campaign kickoff last Thursday. Photo by Corinne Saunders

At the United Way’s 2009-10 official campaign kickoff last Thursday, September 10, the campaign goal of $600,000 was announced and a short video covering this year’s nationwide focus, Live United, was shown.

“United Ways are definitely about raising money for our community, but that’s not all,” said Executive Director Linda Slade.

“Live United means being part of the change,” Slade continued. “It takes everyone in the community working together to make a change. It’s about coming together, not necessarily [just] United Way donors.”

Dr. Ray Russell of Ray’s Weather serves as this year’s campaign chair and part of the reason he agreed to accept the responsibility was because he has seen the need in the High Country, he said when addressing the audience.

His wife is a schoolteacher and he has accompanied her to areas such as Elk Park—areas where the needs are great and to which visitors do not regularly travel or see.

“I believe the best measure of any community or society is how the weak are treated,” Russell said. “The poor, the young, the old, the sick…to see how the community at large responds to those people.

“The problems of the weak have been growing for a while now,” Russell continued, “[but] only since the recession have [they] come to light. I am cautiously optimistic like

Kurt Andersen. I believe the hell-bent, get-rich-at-any-cost [mentality] will be replaced with sustainable, thoughtful progress.”

The importance of giving to the United Way is because the organization does its homework, feeling the pulse of the community to see where the real needs are, said Nancy Reigel, chair of the United Way board.

“We as individuals don’t know who’s hurting,” Reigel said. “The community knows who’s hurting [and] that’s what the United Way does. The agencies don’t operate in isolation; they need each other [and] United Way looks at the whole system. The United Way finds out from the community where the need is.”

Reigel and others involved with the United Way are not going to talk about the campaign goal a lot this year, she said.

“It’s about meeting the needs of the community. I think this [goal] is so achievable, we just need to bring the community in to help us achieve it.”

Mary Boys, Avery County campaign chair, agreed. “Let’s businesses, resorts [and] individuals pull together,” she said. “There are people depending on us.”

For more information or to donate to the High Country United Way, click to www.highcountryunitedway.com or call 828-265-2111.