It’s hard to believe how quickly time flies; we are already in June!
Last month marked our one-year anniversary of our solar panel system being installed on the community association building. The entire project was funded by the City of Calgary and Enmax through the Community Solar Fund, and we couldn’t be more appreciative to have been a recipient. The system collects sunlight, converting it into electricity that is fed directly into the grid, and we receive a credit on our utility bills for the power we produce. In our first year, the solar panels generated an incredible 50,240-kilowatt hours, which reduced our utility bills by over $2,000 during this first year and has the potential to generate 100% of our annual electrical usage!
It’s important to remember that while the RCA does generate revenue through rentals of the building, grants and donations are our primary income so any cost savings on utilities has a massive impact on our bottom line, allowing us to redirect more funds into programming and events for the community.
Speaking of events in the community, we have a few more events coming up this summer, including:
On June 3, we will be hosting our annual Parade of Garage Sales plus a trunk sale at the Community Hall. To register your garage sale on the map, it is $5 for non-members and free for RCA members. To book a spot for the trunk sale, it is $10 for non-members and only $5 for RCA members. Please visit our website and check out the “upcoming events” page for a link to register.
We also have our community cleanup coming up on Saturday, July 8 in collaboration with the City of Calgary. We hope to have a few different partners joining us on this event, but we do need volunteers to make this happen. To register as a volunteer, please check out our website or Facebook for a link to the volunteer signup page.
Lastly, we are thrilled to announce that we will be having our casino fundraiser event on Thursday, August 31 and Friday, September 1 at Ace Casino. This is the single biggest source of funding for the RCA and helps us fund repairs to our building. If you have questions about volunteering with this event, please reach out to the office and we will provide a registration link closer to the date.
It goes without saying that we couldn’t do everything we do without volunteers like our board directors and program hosts, but we always need more! We have already had to cut back on our events calendar because we didn’t have enough volunteers to plan or coordinate events like our annual Stampede Breakfast and had to trim back our Community Cleanup last year. Unfortunately, if we can’t get enough volunteers, we may need to reduce our community events even further and that definitely isn’t what we want.
We have open positions on our board of directors, open slots for program hosts, and of course, always need day-of volunteers for helping to run events. If you might be interested in volunteering, please check out our website to see open availability or reach out to the office and we can provide more information. It’s a great way to contribute to your community and meet your neighbors!
Anita Raffaele
President
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