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New to You estimates just over $2 million in donations to hospital in last 30 years

The New to You might be getting older, but that isn’t stopping the donations from rolling in.
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Teacups for sale at the New to You consignment store. (Trevor Hewitt photo)

The New to You might be getting older, but that isn’t stopping the donations from rolling in.

Charlotte Apperloo has worked with the BVD Hospital Auxiliary (BVDHA) as a volunteer for 48 years.

Holding up a piece up paper with yearly tallies going back to 1990 she said that, by her estimations, the New to You store has donated just over $2 million in the past 30 years to the Bulkley Valley District Hospital (BVDH) in the past 29 years.

“These numbers here are what I could find out of our minute books, what we donated to the hospital.”

Most of the charities records from before that time were destroyed by water damage while being stored in the hospital, which is why more historic totals were not available.

The money goes to the hospital but the BVDHA gets a say in what it funds. According to Apperloo, the process is that the charity will get a “wish list” the hospital needs funding for and then will choose to allocate funds based on what they want to support.

In the past, this has included neonatal and ultrasound equipment.

“Cormac’s coming to our next meeting with a wish list, so we’ll find out then what their prioties are [and] what they need.”

Apperloo said that she first got involved with the BVDHA during a hospital stay when she noticed that there hospital was lacking volunteers.

“They didn’t have any volunteers to come around and I was waiting for writing paper so I could write letters … when she did come she said, ‘we don’t have any volunteers’. So I joined.”

Just like that, Apperloo and two other women she met at the hospital began volunteering and the charity was able to begin staffing the hospital five days a week.

From there she said her relationship with the charity grew, recounting some of the more unconventional fundraising methods they used in the past, such as “tag” fundraisers in decades past.

When asked about why she would donate her time for so many years without any sort of compensation, Apperloo said that it’s important to make sure communities have strong medical infrastructure, even if they are smaller, noting that she herself has dealt with health issues that make her thankful both for the BVDHA and the BVDH.

“It’s the community, we need a hospital and … if we [can] keep everything local, it’s better for us.”

The BVDHA was formed in 1920. It celebrates its 100th anniversary in June of 2020.