Approximately 50 local and regional arts and crafts vendors packed Quattro Hotel & Conference Centre Sunday for a very worthy cause.
Funds raised from the silent auction portion of Sunday’s One Stop Christmas Show & Silent Auction will go to purchasing Christmas gifts for children, hospitalized at Sault Area Hospital, who will not be able to spend the holidays with their families.
Instead, they’ll be able to open their gifts at SAH’s paediatric unit with their families at hand.
Money raised from the silent auction will also go to purchasing gifts to cheer families with ill, newborn children in SAH’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
Sunday’s event was a huge credit to the organizing skills and good hearts of the Sault’s Amanda Johnston and Heather Hilderley-Phillips.
The two Sault women know what its like to spend long periods of time at hospitals away from home, watching over sick children.
They’ve been there.
Amanda’s daughter Brooke was born at 25 weeks in November 2008 and weighed a pound and 13 ounces.
Amanda spent 176 days at a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in London, Ontario with Brooke, away from most of her family and friends at Christmas, touched by the generosity of people who purchased gifts for she and her daughter while in London.
Brooke is now eight years old and doing well, Johnston said.
Hilderley-Phillips' daughter Penelope, now fours years old, suffered from respiratory problems and endured a hospital stay in Ottawa, but she too is feeling better, Heather said.
“It was a lot of work, networking and coordinating (Sunday’s event),” Heather told SooToday.
After word of their cause got around, many volunteers and local businesses stepped up to the plate to help for Sunday’s sale and silent auction.
To raise funds to buy Christmas gifts for local sick children and their families at SAH, there were approximately 100 silent auction prizes available at the One Stop Christmas Show & Silent Auction, including flight tickets from Porter Airlines and merchandise from local and regional arts and crafts vendors.
Amanda and Heather plan to go shopping for Christmas gifts for hospitalised children at SAH soon, and hope to deliver the gifts as close to Christmas as possible, on or around Dec. 23.
This will mark the second consecutive year the two have made the compassionate, gift-giving trip to SAH.