Sport4life Cochrane is hosting a fundraiser at The Venue Bar and Grill on Friday, Aug. 26th.

The purpose of the fundraiser is to seize the unique opportunity coming out of the pandemic to 'Build Back Better' how sports are operated by connecting the various sporting organizations within Cochrane, all while creating a safe and inclusive, and low-cost environment for all those who wish to participate.

Lea Wiens with Sport4life Cochrane says that the goal of the fundraiser is to support all of the programs that Sport4life offers in Cochrane.

"The goal of the funding is to provide training and mentorship to local sport organization to help them offer inclusive and accessible programming as well as to provide our programs within the schools and within community centers that we have been able to offer in the past at other low cost or no cost to the schools."

While Wiens is excited for the prospects of being able to better sports in Cochrane with a clean slate she acknowledges that much work lies ahead, something she belivies can be done in a collaborative way.

"The timing, I think is is pretty exciting and a lot of our local sport organizations are also in that same boat where they're in various stages of recovering from the pandemic, and you know some of them are still at lower registrations and exploring more creative ways to offer their programming so that they can reach more people and have more Cochranites benefit from being active."

While at the fundraiser, Wiens says that attendees can expect a night full of fun games.

"We've decided to do a bit of a game theme, it’ll be COVID friendly, but we will have a bit of a passport where you can go around and try different ‘minute to win it’ type games and challenges, once you complete all of those you can enter your name into a draw for some prizes. We're going to have some mystery envelopes, or you can purchase an envelope and then you don't know what it's going to be. Every envelope has a prize, but there will be some more like what's it called deal or no deal where you may or may not get a good prize or not."

Wiens hopes that the game theme will help get people talking.

"The opportunity for us to connect, and the socializing aspect of the game aspect really appealed to us, because that's what we're about is creating social connections through sport and physical activity."

Also at the fundraiser, their will be a live band, drinks, presentations from community leaders in Cochrane, and a silent auction in support of affordable, accessible and inclusive sport for all kids in Cochrane.

Doors open at 6 p.m. with dinner being served around 7:00 PM, and the band Wild Card will be performing at 9 p.m..

Tickets cost $35 per person, Sport4life Cochrane will be accepting cash, etransfers, or cheque forms of payment.

Tickets can also be purchased online here.