By Christina Burke
Staff Writer
Casinos are not found in Coppell, but on April 28, the Coppell Senior Center was crawling with local adults ready and willing to gamble their money away to a good cause.
Casino Night was part of the fundraising efforts made by the Kid Country Association volunteer based committee that has set out to raise money for the re-building of the landmark Kid Country playground. The committee is headed by President Jack Clark, Fundraising Chairman Ed Guignon and Co-Committee Chair Neil Bales: three gentlemen who have been working long and hard to see their effort with this program flourish.
“Coppell does a really good job of surrounding and organizing its community,” Bales said. “We all have a desire to make this community better not only for ourselves, but also for families and for others. Nineteen years ago, the community came together to build an iconic park that is not only known within Coppell, but also within other cities. It has reached its life span, and it is time to tear it down and re-build it to another life long and memory-making place.”
Funds were needed to power this project, and the idea of a classic Casino Night had been a long time coming. Volunteers in all positions of the committee worked together in an effort to promote the event by getting the word out and making sure this would be a promising night for the guests.
“We wanted to get a fundraiser where a lot of people could come and have a good time,” Clark said. “Casino Night has a good track record of being that kind of event. The volunteers have been putting a lot of effort into this event. We have been working on it for about a year now. There have been five or six primary volunteers putting in 10-20 hours of work per week.”
Somewhere along the way of planning, it was decided that the Casino Night was to be the primary fundraising effort that the Kid Country Association would promote their cause by. Planning this event proved challenging, but completely possible for the assembled Kid Country volunteer team.
“[Getting ready for Casino Night] has been a big long process,” volunteer coordinator Melinda Gilliam said. “Our volunteers have been very generous with their time and with items for the auctions. If we had not have gotten all the donations, it would not have been possible. It was really amazing to see it all come together. It started out as an idea; a group of people sitting around a table. Now it turned into this fantastic event. So many donations and items were available, and there were a lot of fun plans for people.”
On the night of the event, all of the volunteer work came together smoothly to make a memorable fundraiser. Valuable prizes of all kinds were neatly wrapped and in rows for both the silent and live auctions. There were also various table games stationed throughout the event space. Casino Night profited an estimated $10,000 for the Kid Country 2012 effort.
“I am hoping that we are on the downhill side of this,” Bales said. “The beginning of October is the targeted build date, and we are lacking somewhere in the range of $150-200 thousand dollars worth of final funding to be done with this to where we can start building this as we see fit and as it has been designed. We are hoping that it gets some momentum going with the final portion of the builds donated.”
As the Kid Country 2012 effort draws nearer to its final goals, much help is still needed to carry out the plans of the project. Countless opportunities are available for anybody who would like to help re-build the beloved landmark of Kid Country for the next generations.
“There are still tons of ways for people to get involved with volunteering and donating for the Kid Country program itself,” Guignon said. “It is about a half million dollars project and we are at about 250K that we have achieved so far. We are well into it, but we need more help.”
To find ways that you can get involved with this organization go to www.kidcountry2012.com.
