On Sunday (March 19), twenty teams took part in the 5th annual Bowl For Kids Sake.

The annual fundraiser encourages teams to collect donations, get dressed up and bring their fun competitive spirit to support the mentorship program through Big Brothers and Big Sisters.

Steph Gillies, Program Coordinator for Airdrie, Cochrane and area shares it was great to see how enthusiastic everyone was. Doubling the number of teams from the 2017 event, Gillies was thankful for connections the local chapter has made over the past year as well as volunteers, Sandra Iverson and Julia Grohn, who hit the pavement running. "We started planning a couple months earlier which was helpful and we have a great volunteer committee who have been really helpful in getting out to people they know."

Hoping to hit their target of $15,000, Bowl for Kids Sake Cochrane not only hit their fundraising goal but surpassed it. "We raised $15,850 which was really good. The money goes toward supporting our programs and being able to do more recruitment in our community and therefore more kids will be able to be matched if we can do more recruitment and get more mentors through the door."

The big team fundraisers of the event were Cochrane Floors and More Oddballs and the top individual fundraiser was Jacquie Matechuk who raised over $1700 on her own to support the program.

Filling up all three-time slots in 2018, Gillies looks forward to next year and the possibility of expanding further if demand warrants. "If we had enough interest we would for sure do another session. We doubled from last year which was pretty amazing so if we could double again that would be great."

Big Brothers and Big Sisters Cochrane and Area are currently recruiting mentors and mentees; for more information on how you can be involved, go HERE.