Once the Rainy River Hospital Auxiliary, the Rainy River Health Centre Auxiliary is still hard at work helping to support health care in the municipality, and there’s plenty of chances at this year’s Rainy River Walleye Tournament to get in on the action.
Nancy Schaak is the president of the Rainy River Health Centre Auxiliary and she said the auxiliary will have its regular presence at the big tent this weekend, selling some items from the tuck shop, as well as the ever popular break open / pull tab tickets, to help raise money for the different projects and items needed for the hospital.
“What we are doing is what we usually do,” she said.
“We bring certain items down from our tuck shop to sell them at the tournament. We also have pull tab tickets, like the Nevada tickets, which we also try to sell. The money we’re raising is for equipment. Most of the money we get from pull tabs goes to bursaries for graduating high school students in Rainy River.”
Schaak said this year they’re also in the works of holding a quilt raffle, selling tickets for a draw that will bestow a quilt donated by the Cabin Country Quilt Guild. Both the Guild and Auxiliary members will be selling tickets, which Schaak said will be available “in all the regular places” in Rainy River.
“The people who live in town will know where all the usual places are,” Schaak said.
The Auxiliary raises money to help support the local health centre, and this weekend is no exception. Schaak explained that the auxiliary is currently working to support the purchase of a POCT-CBC, or Point of Care Testing Complete Blood Count, analyzer. The analyzer helps to accomplish common clinical laboratory assays and comprises a multitude of tests that evaluate circulating blood cells, according to Today’s Clinical Lab. The machine costs $31,500, and while the auxiliary isn’t expecting to raise that much through one weekend of selling items and ticket at the tournament, every little bit helps towards affording the machine, meaning the people of Rainy River can feel good about spending their money with the auxiliary knowing it’s going towards something that will benefit everyone.
“We’re not raising all that money,” Schaak said.
“We’re just going to try to raise some of it. The chances of us raising that kind of amount are pretty slim. But I suspect it makes it a little easier on Riverside’s pocketbooks, too, if we can raise some money for it.”
It takes people to raise that kind of money, both those buying items from the auxiliary, as well as those who help the auxiliary run. Schaak said they have upwards of a dozen people who ehlp make the auxiliary function, but they’re always looking for more people who want to come onboard and help out.
“We’re always looking for new people,” she said.
“If we count them all, I would say there are 15 people that are there all the time.”
You’re never far from your neighbour in Rainy River, being the close-knit community that it is, but if anyone is interested in helping out with the Rainy River Health Centre Auxiliary but doesn’t know a member personally, Schaak said they can head down to the Health Centre itself and the receptionists there will be able to put them in contact with the auxiliary to sign up.
It’s worth your while to stop by the Rainy River Health Centre Auxiliary’s table this weekend during the Rainy River Walleye Tournament, and Schaak said she’s very thankful that the tournament organizers seek them out to include them in the weekend’s proceedings.
“They would probably say ‘oh, you know, we let everybody do this,’ but it’s just really nice that they come to us and say ‘are you coming [to the tournament]?” Schaak said.
“Everybody in the community is really, really on board with what we’re doing. We’re very lucky that way.”
