Westley Hood wins Children's Wish Foundation volunteer award
Mitch Cormier | CBC News | Posted: June 27, 2016 3:17 PM | Last Updated: June 27, 2016
It began with the Short Fat Guys Downhill Run, a questionable athletic endeavour that created a champion for the Children's Wish Foundation of Prince Edward Island.
"First year I collected a couple of hundred dollars. The next year I raised $300 or $400, each year that I have been doing this it went up and up and up and up, and now I'm getting over $20,000 a year," said Westley Hood, this year's Children's Wish volunteer of the year.
The fun run has been replaced by the annual Walk For Wishes. Twenty-five years later Hood, a porter at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, still is at the front of the pack when it comes to fundraising.
25 years, $250K
Over the years Hood has collected $250,000 to grant wishes to sick kids on Prince Edward Island. Roughly translated, that's two wishes a year from his volunteer efforts alone.
I just like to help a lot of people.
- Children's Wish volunteer Westley Hood
"I see a few of them here in the hospital," said Hood of the wish kids he's helped. "Every time I see them I drop in and talk to them for a few minutes."
Over the last two decades Hood has assembled a list of people who he's come to count on for contributions. It's a three-month effort beginning in late June and ending the day before the annual walk in the fall.
"I don't know, it's just the way I am I guess," Hood said of his efforts for numerous events in Charlottetown.
"I just like to help a lot of people at different tournaments and stuff like that. I just help along."
This year, to Hood's surprise, he was awarded the Laura Cole National Volunteer Award by Children's Wish Foundation of Canada. It came as a complete surprise and was announced, appropriately, at an event he was volunteering at.
"I was pretty shocked over that, I didn't expect anything like that, but that's the way they sprung it on me."
The award came with a short trip to the annual meeting in Ottawa. This is the first time the national award has been awarded to a volunteer from Prince Edward Island.
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