Haskayne students raise over $25,000 with Chillin’ for Charity
By Tina Shaygan, November 10 2017 —
Hosted for the eighth time on the University of Calgary campus, this year’s Chillin’ for Charity event raised over $25,000, exceeding the organizers’ $15,000 goal.
Chillin’ for Charity is an annual event held by Haskayne School of Business students for JDC West, a competition where business students from 12 universities across Western Canada look to solve business-related case problems, among other things.
Chillin’ for Charity tasks participants with jumping in a pool of freezing-cold water to raise money for local charities. This year, U of C students raised money for the United Way Calgary and Area. The JDC West competition is also taking place at the U of C for the first time this January.
According to Julian Brumec-Parsons, one of the co-captains of the U of C JDC West team, the competition is more than just about solving case problems.
“Part of what we do as teams throughout Western Canada is yes, participate in the cases, but we also do a lot of work in the community,” Brumec-Parsons said.
Brumec-Parsons said preparation for the the event had an early start of 4:30 a.m to get the hot tub ready for participants to warm up after jumping. This year, the event started outside of the Taylor Family Digital Library at 9 a.m and went until late afternoon with over 80 people jumping in the cold water. Brumec-Parsons added that the success of this year’s event was largely due to the enthusiasm of the campus community.
“People would come for their jump and stick around just to watch and enjoy the event,” he said. “It was a lot of participation, not just across Haskayne, but the entire university.”
Nik Golob, Students’ Union business representative and a delegate for JDC West, plunged in four times on the day of the event. He said the involvement of faculty members like Haskayne dean Jim Dewald and other campus communities contributed to the positive outcome of the event.
“[Dewald] was a huge part of pushing this forward and got other deans to jump,” Golob said. “Other departments like the IT department jumped. Our MBA office also had a team.”
Brumec-Parsons hopes the event continues to grow.
“We want to make sure the fundraising happens every year and the amount we raise continues to go up. That stems from getting more people involved,” he said. “This year was great. We had a ton of people jump in and we are always going to have time to fit more people in.”
Golob thinks the future growth of the event will depend on community participation.
“I think this year we did a good job getting it out there and trying to get different smaller communities involved,” Golob added. “Just getting those people involved and talking about it, telling their friends, it’s little by little. If we keep growing like that, it’ll be great.”
The JDC West competition will take place on campus from Jan. 12–14. The event is open to the public and attendees can watch students from Western Canadian universities take part in a weekend-long series of competitions and events.