Cory taking phone calls the day of the Walk. Blizzard conditions had everyone wondering whether the event would be cancelled.
Meet Cory Moisan, Salon Development Partner for Collega International. As an employee of the Collega for AVEDA network of salons and spas in Canada a challenge was put before Cory and her fellow employees early in 2008:
During Earth Month (April, 2008) help raise $150,000 for WaterCan, enough to save 6000 children— the number of children below age 5 who die of water and sanitation-related diseases each day.
The challenge moved Cory to action in a big way!
She immediately signed up to participate in the 6km “I Walk for Water” event organized by Collega-Aveda in Edmonton, one of 18 locations across Canada. “I realized that clean water is something that I take for granted,” says Cory adding, “I wanted to do my part to raise dollars and awareness of the fact that millions of people don’t have this convenience and die because of it every day.”
And spread the word she did! She wrote passionate letters to family and friends, sported a “You Should Pledge Me” t-shirt and handed out business cards at parties containing information about sponsoring her participation in the walk. Everywhere she went she took an opportunity to chat people up about the cause. What began as simply an opportunity to “help out”, turned into a motivational phenomenon. Cory and her friends, family, colleagues and clients were caught up in a whirlwind of excitement and desire to do increasingly more. Reflecting on the experience Cory says:
“Everyone said such wonderful things about what we were trying to do and that gave me energy….the more excited I became so did the people I was speaking to. My energy spread to them and then theirs to others. I was so touched by it all and realized that I was really able to make a difference through the power of positivity and being a good role model.”
April 22nd, in sub-zero temperatures and knee-high snow, Cory and 30 other die-hard Collega-Aveda employees and customers walked for 6km through downtown Edmonton. The walk symbolized the average distance women must travel to fetch drinking water in eastern Africa.
Cory’s fantastic fundraising efforts led her to win a trip to Kenya with WaterCan’s 2009 Study Tour, courtesy of Collega-Aveda.
To find out about the 2009 Collega-Aveda Earth Month campaign benefiting WaterCan visit: www.iwalkforwater.ca
