TeleMiracle experience heart warming for Lloyd trio

“Five and a half million dollars is a very exciting total for us,” said Michelle Stepp.

“I sit on our Kinsmen Foundation Board as well, which is the board that decides where that money goes, so it’s exciting for the board to be able to help all of those people, and this money truly makes a difference in so many people’s lives, so it’s a really excaiting total.”

Funds from the annual TeleMiracle fundraiser help people in Saskatchewan with things such as travel, accommodations and meals when they have to travel outside of their own community for medical appointments, surgery, or any type of medical treatment.

“We also help with lots of different medical equipment, so if people need things like scooters, walkers or wheelchairs, we help fund that too,” she said. “The money stays local to the province of Saskatchewan, but it includes every resident in Lloydminster. It doesn’t matter if you live in Lloyd and have an Alberta address, it still helps you. Lloydminster is the exception to the ‘having to stay in Saskatchewan’ rule.”

Stepp explained she and Sidoryk helped organize all of the volunteers that came to the show, while her husband co-chaired the corporate side of things.

Being the Kinsmen Foundation’s biggest annual fundraiser, Stepp noted it was nice to be back in full swing after a couple of pandemic years.

“It was exciting to have all our volunteers back and able to help in full capacity,” she said. “The TeleMiracle fundraiser is one thing our Kinsmen and Kinettes look forward to being able to help with every year, so those two COVID years were tough because we couldn’t run a full-scale fundraiser. I think we had around 450 Kinsmen and Kinettes members there this year, which was amazing.”

Of the over $5.5M raised, $38,000 was donated by the Lloydminster Kinsmen and Lloydminster Kinettes through funds raised at the annual TeleMiracle Steak Night, which the two clubs co-host together.

“It’s the Kinsmen and Kinettes that make that event possible. We have two clubs here in Lloydminster so this has been a joint project of ours for some time; it’s a great fundraiser,” said Stepp. “The total we brought to TeleMiracle this year was just over $38,000 and it was really nice to present that total on stage.

“TeleMiracle is also pledging $1M to the province of Saskatchewan for organizations that need our help, so we’ll see a lot of applications coming to the board for that,” said Stepp. “There’s big things coming, it’s really exciting.”

Known as Saskatchewan’s charity, TeleMiracle was hosted in Saskatoon and wrapped up its annual 20-hour fundraiser on Feb. 26 with a total of $5,519,229 raised. Since starting in 1977, TeleMiracle has raised over $158M.