It was a night filled with plenty of activities for the whole family to enjoy, including; live entertainment, player interviews, AFL Playground activities, auctions and the chance to win great raffle prizes.
Best of all, the local red-and-gold army were still be able to get their footy fix with the GC SUNS interstate showdown against Geelong airing live on the Southern Plaza big screen.
With more than $2,500 raised for the club’s three nominated youth homelessness charity partners, Gold Coast Youth Service, Project for Homeless Youth Gold Coast and YHES House, GC SUNS CEO Travis Auld told goldcoastfc.com.au the club remained passionate towards improving the issue of youth homelessness on the Gold Coast.
“It’s the first event of its type on the Gold Coast and it was great to get such a strong participation on the night,” Auld said.
“Very early on during our foundation we identified youth homelessness as a real issue on the coast with the Gold Coast City Council, and since then have developed some really innovative programs working with local providers.
The GC SUNS Homeless Sleep Out is another really good step towards building awareness and a bit of fund-raising to help deal with some of these challenges on the coast.”
With the charity having recently accepted a generously-sized cheque for $5,000 at the Homeless Sleep Out’s official launch, an overwhelmed Amanda Wright from Gold Coast Youth Service said the GC SUNS’ high profile had had a significant impact on her charity.
“The support the Gold Coast SUNS have given us over the three years just continues to grow and grow,” said Wright.
“They have been able to do a lot more than what we a lot of our services can do, they’ve pulled in a lot of corporate partners and continue to develop new partnerships to support us… and to have the sleep-out supporting the homeless youth of our city is just fantastic.”
The Chair of the GC SUNS Partnership Committee – Clint Ford from Gold Coast Rotary (9640), preached the importance for the wider community to take action towards the growing issue.
“It’s a problem (youth homelessness) which we all face in our community and so it was great to draw on community members, Rotarians and AFL supporters to support the three charities on the night.”
Ford said the recently-launched Horizon’s Program was going forward in leaps and bounds.
“We’ve had fantastic results with our game-day raffles and the support from both entities for this great event has been fantastic,” Ford said.
“Rotary is very impressed with the partnership between the GC SUNS through the Horizon’s Program and the cheque of $5,000 to the Gold Coast Youth Services couldn’t have gone to a better charitable organisation.”
