General News

Safe Use Hastings one step forward to goals

June 24, 2021

By Kristena Schutt-Moore

As of Friday, June 11 Safe Use Hastings is one step closer to its goals. Due to an anonymous donation of $25,000 and have been able to purchase an RV.

Director of operations for Safe Use Hastings, Lisa Fiorotto-Bickert says, “With the help of Steve and Sons Trailer and Marine we have an RV. Steve helped to source the RV and after some negotiations the owners Rob and Nat drove from the Ottawa region and left it with us for a small deposit while the donation came in. How awesome are they?”

However, that is just the first step. Next they will need to retrofit the RV, raise money to retrofit the RV both privately and publicly through fundraising, get the exemption from Health Canada, become a charitable organization, not just a not for profit, hire staff, buy equipment and supplies, get insurance and plates for the RV, continue to gather support, and hold fundraising events to raise funds as they still wish to reach their goal of $35,000.

“We have raised almost $4,000 of $35,000 goal on GoFundMe,” says Fiorotto-Bickert. “With the $25,000 gift we have the RV but we have so much more to pay for. For example, medical supplies, insurance, plating, branding, legal fees and of course the application costs to become a registered charity. So for this reason we are still aiming to raise our goal of $35,000.”

Steve and Sons will be doing the retrofit of the RV. The retrofit will be designed with guidance from the North Hastings Community Trust but they are still looking for help with the technical drawings of the inside of the trailer for the exemption application.

Those interested in more information can visit www.drashleywhite.com or the GoFundMe page https://gofund.me/a0d6e2c6.