An area woman who for years has organized a successful fundraising event in support of ARCH Hospice is finding new ways to support the charity, all while encouraging people to live their best lives.
Marcy D’Ettorre co-founded the Ride for ARCH aka the Dragonfly Run with her husband, Alex D’Ettorre, helping to raise close to $180,000 for ARCH Hospice over the past 10 years.
D’Ettorre said she is proud of her accomplishments with the event, bringing the biker community together in support of a great cause.
"It started out really small in 2015, and we didn't realize how big it was going to get and how how wonderful doing this kind of thing would be. You meet so many kind-hearted loving people who are so generous, especially when it comes to ARCH," said D’Ettorre.
After moving from the Sault to Bruce Mines, she put together a new venture by combining over 30 years as a health care worker with her desire to raise more funds for a worthy cause.
"I wanted to do something for ARCH, not just every August because it's only one day," said D’Ettorre of thinking beyond the Ride for ARCH.
D’Ettorre developed a new web site called Bucket and Go, which encourages people to follow their dreams through 'bucket lists' and clears up some of the misconceptions around them.
The term bucket list first appeared in 2007 movie of the same name starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freemen in which their characters create lists of things they want to do before they die, or kick the bucket.
"People automatically think you have to go to Greece or do a world wide tour and that's your bucket list, but no, you can go into your backyard and still attain what you want in your life," said D’Ettorre.
Don't know what to put on your own personal bucket list? The web site offers a quiz to help you navigate what you want to do.
To accompany the site, D'Ettorre created a number of calendars around the Bucket and Go themes and as a fundraiser for ARCH. One is a celestial calendar that helps keep track of events in the night sky, like meteor showers, and the second is centred on National Parks across North America.
"I wanted to help people find meaning and and momentum and magic in their everyday life, so I came up with these two calendars that I designed — but I wanted them not just to be calendars. I wanted them to be more motivational tools for people," she said.
Fifty percent of the proceeds of the first 500 calendars will be donated the ARCH.
"Instead of just donating one day a year in August when we do the Dragonfly run, I'm now able to try to offer another incentive to donate around Christmas time," said D'Ettorre.