Raquel Ness – Philanthropy

You mentioned that you are dedicated philanthropist, could you tell us about some of the projects that you’re involved with?

For sure. When I first moved back to Orillia I knew I wanted to get back on the ground running, so I started volunteering at the Child Advocacy Centre and eventually worked my way up to the Board Chair.

I am incredibly involved in the Chamber of Commerce, which of course supports the business community, but also does a lot of great efforts towards creating business within Orillia and boosting the economy and shopping local, which is incredibly important.

I was approached recently, just about over a year ago, by my friend Amber McGarvey, and we started the Ripple of Kindness chapter in Orillia. Essentially that gives an opportunity for us to make a significant impact in donations to other charities.

We’re actually coming up to our one year anniversary, which we are celebrating tonight.

What type of charities does Ripple of Kindness support?

Ripple of Kindness is very interesting because it’s a different kind of model. Essentially, it is all women, and women all get together and then all the members are able to nominate different charities. So it could be any charity as long as the money is staying local that’s the most important thing. A couple of donations we’ve given are to Hospice and then we just did Green Haven Women’s Shelter.

So during this time period of over the year, we get two opportunities to nominate charities, the members, and then everybody gets to vote on it, and essentially the highest one wins. So it could be any charity and we continue to look for more charities and encourage them to come and put their name forward because before you know it, you could be a recipient of 30-40-50 thousand dollars, which is very significant.

I think it is, but the one thing is they have to be local?

They have to be local. That’s incredibly important.