ORGANISERS of next year’s Colour City Running Festival want to reach out to the city’s homeless population and victims of domestic violence by donating money from their event to Housing Plus.
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Co-ordinator of the 2016 festival David Gibson said he was pleased the event had teamed up with such a worthy cause.
“We are tremendously proud to be supporting a local charity which provides such vital assistance to Orange locals,” Mr Gibson said.
“We all wanted to help people struggling with homelessness and domestic violence.
“There were some very good applications this year and we wanted to once again focus on a local charity that does good work in our community.”
Mr Gibson said this year’s charity partner, the mental health organisation O’Brien Centre, was another worthy charity partner.
He said next year, the festival would also donate about $5000 to both the Rural Fire Service and Orange 2nd Division Scouts, who help run the event.
“Last year the festival raised over $20,000 for local charities and we definitely want to try to improve on that this year,” Mr Gibson said.
“Apart from our overall fundraising effort through the festival, we are also now giving participants the opportunity to assist us further through the option to make additional donations to any of our three charity partners when registering for our event.”
Housing Plus business development manager Justin Cantelo said 100 percent of the money raised would assist people in need within the Orange community.
He said Housing Plus staff planned to both run in the event and donate their time.
“Homelessness and domestic violence are such big issues in Orange, these extra funds will go directly towards people who need help,” he said.
Mr Cantelo said being named the event’s charity partner would also help raise Housing Plus’s profile within the community.
Mr Gibson said the festival had developed a reputation as being one of the region’s top 10 running festivals outside of the capital cities in Australia and New Zealand.
He said this year’s event attracted 1998 runners, up from the 1650 who took part in the 2014 festival.
Entries for next year’s event are open.
For more information or to enter, go to www.orangecolourcityrunningfestival.com.au.
tracey.prisk@fairfaxmedia.com.au
