The Canadian Sikh community has collected $2.3 million to be donated to a new hospital through a fundraising event involving Punjabi community radio programs .
The money will be spent on building the William Osler Health Centre Foundation's Brampton Hospital at Bovaird Drive and Bramalea Road, which is scheduled to open in 2007.The fundraising event, Better Health Radiothon, was organized from Nov 15 to 24. During each programme, radio broadcasters discussed the importance of the new hospital with local residents and appealed for support.
"It truly was a tremendous outpouring of generosity from listeners in the Canadian Sikh community. Word spread quickly and we have had inquiries about support for our new hospital from as far away as Vancouver and Texas," Maureen Flanagan Pool, director of development and new initiatives for the foundation said.
"We had calls coming in from across the Greater Toronto Area and from as far away as London, Cambridge and Ottawa," Pool added.
The radio centres to take part at the fundraising event included - Asian Connections Radio, Mehfil Radio, Nirwar Radio, Pardesi Radio, Parvasi Radio, Radio Punjab, Sargam Radio, Sur Sagar Radio and Surtal Radio.
The new hospital project is dubbed to be the largest health care infrastructure in the country. The 608-bed hospital, spread at more than one million sq ft area, would "keep with the modern trend toward holistic health care", said the press release.
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