The Sheep River Health Trust board chair is handing over the reins.
As his three-year term comes to a close, Andrew Gustafson, owner and manager of Natural High Fitness and CrossFit, looks back at his time on the board with pride.
“It’s been a real pleasure, it’s a great organization. There’s five different pillars of funding, and that’s one of the things that attracted me to it right off the bat was the fact that it’s very diverse,” he said. “It allows your volunteer time to be spread out and impact a great deal of different types of people in different ways and so I was happy to support an organization with such a great mandate.”
Having spent a year and a half as a director and then another year and a half as vice-chair, Gustafson has spent the last six years on the board.
“In that time the health trust has been growing every single year and doing some unique things and some cool projects in our community,” he said. “In the last three years with me as a chairman, (we’ve raised) somewhere in the neighbourhood of $700,000 to $800,000.”
Giving credit where credit is due is important to Gustafson, who said that success was not due exclusively to him at all. To talk of the success of the health trust would have to include the three staff: Andrea Mitchell, executive director; Carol Quinn, administration; and Candice Wyma, fund development, who replaced Tanya Thorn who stepped down after five years.
“It’s them who do all the amazing day-to-day activities,” he said. “The role of the chair is in being the community liaison, telling stories and going out and meeting people and sort of being the face of the trust and also in managing the day-to-day governance type of stuff.”
Speaking of some of the unique projects he has been involved in with the trust, Gustafson held Radiothon, Avenue of Trees and Photos with Santa in high regard.
“Those were for sure my favourite events the health trust does every year,” he said. “I was really proud to be part of a board that initiated all three of those programs, and they’ve been great, we’ve raised tremendous amounts of money with that.”
With funds raised from the events held in the last three years, the health trust has funded the cancer clinic and maternity ward renovations at High River Hospital, as well as renovations and modernizations at the Rising Sun Long Term Care facility in Black Diamond, work with the Oilfields General Hospital, and renovations of the public health and urgent care units at the Okotoks Health and Wellness Centre.
They have also supported organizations through funding such as Literacy for Life, SNAPS, Rowan House Society and dozens more community organizations, he said.
“We also have school meal programs that exist in 12 different schools in our region,” he said. “The health trust is involved in helping pay for meals for breakfast for kids every single day for 12 schools.
“Those are (some of) the reasons why someone should be proud to be part of the health trust, that’s the reason why I was proud to be part of the health trust. To be able to call myself a chair was quite the privilege.”
With vice-chair Cindy Dorais stepping into the role of chair, Gustafson will serve on the board as past-chair for the next year. After that, he doesn’t know what comes next.
“The rules are I have to leave for a year before I can apply to be back on the board,” he said. “Jury’s out on whether or not I’ll do that.... but at least another year I’ll be involved and I’ll lend my support to Cindy as she takes on the role of chair, and I’ll be a volunteer in whatever capacity the staff need me to be.”
