The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
More than $7,000 was raised for two organizations – including the East Millstone First Aid Squad – at a fundraiser held at Twenty/20 Taphouse on Cedar Grove Lane on October 25.
The fundraiser was held by the Jeni Fund, a Hasbrouck Heights-based foundation dedicated to raising money for burn victims, education purposes, and first responders, among others.
The other organization benefiting from the fundraiser was the Toms River-based Sander & Matits Burn Foundation.
First Aid Squad Deputy Chief Christine Van Deursen said that in addition to raising needed money, the fundraiser is a way for the squad to advertise itself.
The money, she said, will be put toward “buying insurance for our vehicles, supplies for our rigs, and a new rig. We need a new rig.”
Most of the squad’s operating money is raised through a yearly fund drive letter, she said.
Marylyn Kampo, the squad’s president, said community fundraisers are very important to the squad.
“We need that to survive,” she said.
“It’s good for us to know that the Jeni Fund thought of us,” she said.
Township resident Meg DeFilippis, a volunteer with the Jeni Fund who helped organize the fundraiser, said that donating to the first aid squad fits squarely in the fund’s mission.
Jeni Doherty Khoury, for whom the fund is named, “cared about community,” DeFilippis said. “She didn’t care whose community, as long as it was helping someone’s community.”
“So in the spirit of her goals, we were like, okay, let’s help out our local community and extend it to the volunteer First Aid Squad and also further her support of burn survivors with the Sander & Matits Burn Foundation,” she said.
About 70 people attended the fundraiser at $100 per ticket. The evening included a tricky tray and a 50/50 raffle.
DeFilippis said that the total before receipts for the tricky tray and raffle were counted was about $7,000.
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