Habitat for Humanity Celebrates in Thunder Bay

THUNDER BAY – On Saturday November 8, 2014 Equipment World hosted the 2nd Little Diggers Day Event at the 4th Annual Great Gingerbread Build digging up $4,000 in support of Habitat for Humanity Thunder Bay. From 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM at the Valhalla Inn, families were invited, to spend the day looking at and sitting on smaller construction equipment (diggers), building

wood projects donated by the Home Depot, playing with construction themed toys and games and decorating Gingerbread Cookies while the Great Gingerbread Build was taking place.   Owner of Equipment World, Lyle Knudsen says; “Equipment World was pleased to partner with Habitat for Humanity to bring more awareness to the established Great Gingerbread Build event and to provide some added fundraising revenue for their efforts. We have a great relationship with Habitat for Humanity Thunder Bay and after realizing the demand from last year’s Little Diggers Day event, we wanted to repeat it in a bigger and better manner this year.”

Corporate Marketing Director at Equipment World, Heather Syvitski, continues; “With the overwhelming success of the Little Diggers Day event in 2013, Equipment World quickly partnered with Habitat for Humanity and the Valhalla Inn to book the event for 2014. The Valhalla generously donated the large indoor space to accommodate everything inside, which is wonderful due to the cold and windy weather at this time of year. There is clearly an interest in Construction Equipment among families with young children and with the presence of our new mascot, Freddy the Forklift Driver, we feel Equipment World has a fun and friendly side to share with our community while showcasing some of our premier equipment lines. In addition to the construction themed decorations and activities, we also offered raffle prizes that had construction related books & toys. This year we offered pre-registration for the first 300 people to reserve a souvenir construction hat with a value pack “loot bag” of goodies from our event sponsors. As a bonus this year, we were able to give 350 Little Diggers Day colouring/activity books and crayons designed and donated by Shout media and mini flashlights donated by Sportop@Work. The event welcomed over 450 children and their families!

“With all 300 construction hats pre-reserved before the event and knowledge of how the event was received in 2013, the Equipment World team was better prepared to assist the crowds.” Syvitski continues, “this year we also added a ‘Do it yourself’ photo contest and invited parents to submit the photos of their children to be included in an online photo album which also enters them into a contest to win more prizes. Submissions for the photo contest and online post-event survey are open until November 28, 2014.”

Knudsen adds,“Equipment World would like to thank the event sponsors, staff and friends who volunteered their time to work at the event. It couldn’t happen without dedicated individuals to put it on. As part of our Mission, Vision and Values statement, Equipment World strongly believes in supporting the communities, in which we live and work and continuously make an effort to volunteer and fundraise for local causes and charities.”

“We had some excellent community support to help pull the Little Diggers Day event together and to add more value to the experience.” Syvitski concludes, “We would like to thank the following companies for their generous donations and promotion of the event: Little Giants Indoor Play Centre, Giant Gymnastics, Toy Sense, Sweet Escape Cake Cafe & Bakery, Twincity, Shout Media, G & G Hauling, The Valhalla Inn, Habitat for Humanity Thunder Bay, Sportop Marketing, Veressent Life, Sugar Bees Candy Buffet, Lowery’s, Dance Basics, Magic 99.9FM and Country 105.3FM, Home Depot with the Home Depot Kid’s Workshop projects (including their staff) and the staff and friends of Equipment World who volunteered their time to work at the event!”

Equipment World will be posting the raffle prize draw winners and photos from the event on their website www.equipworld.com/diggers3 and on their Facebook page www.facebook.com/equipworld

following the final draw dates of November 28, 2014. All raffle prize winners have been contacted.