On December 16, over 200 hundred donors gifted more than $53,000 during the Mega Flamingo Car Rally Fundraiser for Covenant House Vancouver which was created as a special birthday surprise for Megan Roberts.
Megan Roberts is a psychiatrist who spent most of her career on the front-lines, providing mental health medical attention to youths and adults, who presented at hospital emergency.
Megan has stage four cancer and celebrated her 44th birthday on December 16, 2020. Her family came up with a COVID-friendly idea to create a car rally for Meg’s birthday. As part of the birthday celebration, it was decided that they would like to support Covenant House Vancouver.
Megan’s sister Carolyn Serka shared, “We could not involve Megan in the decision to support Covenant House Vancouver as we wanted it all to be a surprise, but we all know her well enough that we knew Covenant House was the perfect fit for Meg. She has dedicated most of her life to mental health as a psychiatrist. Through this work she has also spent a great deal of time working with troubled youth and adults that lacked the appropriate resources back when they were younger to get the help that they needed.”
The family created a fundraising page on our do-it-yourself fundraising site and when a donation was made it entitled the supporter to a plastic pink flamingo which would be placed on Meg’s front lawn on her birthday.
Supporters and donors made up of friends and family picked up their flamingos and drove to Meg’s house on December 16th to drop them off, many with personal messages attached.
Neighbours and people passing by wanted to know what was going on and once they found out that it was a fundraiser for Covenant House in honour of Megan, they asked how they could donate.
The original fundraising goal was $5,000 and to date it has raised over $53,000.
Megan and her entire family are beyond grateful to everyone for their tremendous support and are continuing to encourage more donations with the goal of doubling what they have already raised.
