Year 5 hopefuls embrace award-winning legacy of Champions for Charity
By Jeff Hicks
www.champsforcharity.ca
KITCHENER—
Mandy Bujold’s Champions for Charity spins its award-winning web of community caring and fundraising fisticuffs wider every year.
Past champs mentor and inspire new champs. Enchanted ringside spectators one year transform into first-time boxers and aspiring pugilists the next.
All for MacKids. All to help local families and kids drawn into a fight they never asked for.
“I couldn’t think of a better charity,” said Waterloo consultant Matt Yagar, 53.
“I know people who competed in it last year. Are there challenges and fears? Yes. But my body says to lean into that. So here I am.”
Yes. There he was at Sydfit Health Centre in Kitchener.
Leaning into the Champions for Charity legacy with 74 other business leaders and community crusaders hoping to be selected by month’s end for one of 20 spots — ten bouts featuring 10 men and 10 women — in the Tapestry Hall ring next April 23.
Year Five is upon us. The initial goal — a million dollars for McMaster Children’s Hospital and world-class care for Waterloo Region kids — is daunting. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
After all, the Champs have raised a total of $2,750,000 for MacKids since 2019.
Last year, along with a nomination for a Canadian Event Award, a record $1.5-million was raised.
Can that incredible amount be surpassed as the Golden Horseshoe chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals honours Champions for Charity with an outstanding fundraising award? We shall see.
Fifteen weeks of gruelling training follows the announcement of the anxious 2027 Champs.
Plus there’s an additional goal to fight for. The next Champs aim to raise another $140,000 to help new charity partner Food4Kids Waterloo Region combat hunger.
Achieving that goal would take 100 children off the Food4Kids waitlist.
“It’d be great to give back to the community,” said Cambridge’s Jim Aru, verbally cracking the event’s fundraising spine like only a 51-year-old chiropractor can.
“It’d be a really good goal for me to achieve later in life — for my mid-life crisis.”
So a vanguard of community volunteers are lining up to be punched in the face for a great cause. The Champions for Charity siren call to slug it out for kids cannot be ignored.
“I’ve been a silent follower and admirer for the last couple of years,” said 33-year-old Emily Vancise, the director of operations for a solar construction company.
“I’ve been dying to do this for a long time.”
Such a sunny forecast for the Year 5 Champs headed for their first sanctioned bout.
Buckets of sweat. Soliloquies of swagger. Fundraising bars, old and new, to leap.
The web spins outward and grows exponentially wider
“The boxing is what brings people into the room, but it’s the community that keeps them coming back,” said Bujold, a two-time Olympian boxer.
“What we’ve built is so much bigger than a night of boxing. It’s a community of people who believe in showing up, challenging themselves and using their time, talent and resources to make a difference in the lives of local children.”
And inspiring others to follow in their boxing footsteps.
Mechanics and number-crunchers. Pizza twirlers and cocktail shakers. Gumshoes and hall cops.
“I like to do hard things,” said the self-employed Miranda Sousa, whose husband Paul was the Champs top fundraiser two years ago.
“I like to challenge myself. And I like to support my community.”
And, along the way, a new wave of Champions for Charity will be transformed. The trainers and coaches, like provincial boxing champion Valentine Wilson, know how this journey works for the Champs. Inspiration leads to invigoration.
“They find a new love for life.”
