Source: Mount Allison University
http://www.mta.ca/news/index.cgi?id=1132 Shinerama Love Tour celebrates hugely successful fund raising campaign — Mount A stop set for Oct. 27October 26, 2006 As the 42nd edition of the national Shinerama campaign to support the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation comes to a close, students across the country can celebrate one of the most successful campaigns to date. With the campaign approaching the $1-million mark for the first time, Shinerama takes to the road with the Shinerama Love Tour – 13 musical performances taking place across the country to highlight and support the work of each community’s Shinerama volunteers. The tour began in Toronto on October 4 and is making its way across Canada. It will close on October 27 in Sackville at the Tantramarsh Pub on the Mount Allison campus. Admission is $5, with all proceeds going to Mount Allison’s Shinerama campaign. Many of the shows feature local artists, and each one will include a cheque presentation by local Shinerama organizers to the national chair. On the Sackville line-up is well-known Allisonian and East Coast musician Mike Allison. A professional performer for six years, Mike has written award-winning plays, appeared on Canadian Idol and shared the stage with such artists as Ashley MacIsaac and The Rheostatics. He has been donating his time and talent to the Shinerama Love Tour. "It’s impossible to bring all 35,000 of our volunteers together in one place to celebrate this accomplishment," said Drew Dudley, national chair of the Shinerama Campaign and Mount Allison alumnus. "So we’ve decided to go to as many of them as possible! The Shinerama Love Tour is a totally new concept for the campaign – a centrally-organized event that travels city-to-city, recognizing the volunteers of each community and helping them to raise even more money for the fight against CF." As Mount Allison alumni, Dudley and Allison felt it was only right to conclude their cross-country adventure in Sackville. "This tour has been a dream of ours for many years," said Dudley. "There was really no question in our minds that we should end it back where our friendship and connection to Shinerama began. Mount Allison has been so good to us; to play here is always like coming home." However, the tour is about much more than the shows themselves. "We hope this tour serves as a catalyst to bring our volunteers, supporters, and the general public together through the tour’s online community at campuscentral.com," said Dudley. "We’ll be updating the community daily with photos, trip diaries and extensive videos that will include show footage and interviews with our volunteers. We’re going to do everything we can to introduce the people of Shinerama to each other and to the wider community." The Shinerama Love Tour is made possible through the support of campuscentral.com, Van-Smith Marketing, and Cozumo. —30— About Cystic Fibrosis and Shinerama Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the most common, fatal inherited disease affecting young Canadians. The disease affects several bodily systems, primarily the lungs and the digestive system. A build-up of thick mucus in the lungs causes severe respiratory problems. Meanwhile, mucus and protein build-up in the digestive tract results in extreme difficulty in digesting and absorbing adequate nutrients from food. Cystic fibrosis affects each individual differently, with varying degrees of severity. The effects of CF are most devastating in the lungs, and most CF deaths are due to lung disease. Shinerama began as a one-day shoe-shining fund raiser in Waterloo, Ontario in 1964, and has since grown into a campaign of hundreds of events under the "Shinerama" banner. This year, over 60 colleges and universities and 35,000 students participated in Shinerama, which has raised over $17 million dollars since it began to support the work of the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CCFF). For more information on the 2006 Shimerama Campaign, visit www.shinerama.ca.
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