Four people.
On display in a window.
For 24 hours.
In downtown Barrie.
The 705 Recovery Community Centre at 58 Dunlop Street West offers a variety of free services from grief counselling to addiction counselling. It's been a place to be heard for the last year-and-a-half.
It currently helps about 300 people a week, from all walks of life.
But, as a non-profit organization, funding is needed to maintain the centre, which brings us to this weekend's 24-Hour Window Raise-a-Thon for Recovery.
Todd Palmer was among the four people in the window last year.
"This is a place where they can get connected, be a part of the community. And, you know, it's kind of why I did it. I was suffering from addiction."
Palmer won't be participating this year, but among those who will be is Geoff MacGillivray.
"I'm a recovering addict. And I, myself have had mental health battles. So, I'm a pretty big advocate. The biggest thing that I hear is that people feel like they're alone. They know, now, they're not alone in addiction or mental health. And this centre kind of provides a community where they don't feel alone, and they can relate and connect."
You can sponsor Geoff or any of the others at The705Barrie.com, but you can also show up Saturday, and pay to play a prank on any of them.
Palmer says the sky is the limit, "Dave came down [last year], he had three eggs. Two of them were hard-boiled, one of them was not. He said, 'choose an egg.' Obviously, I chose the one that was not hard-boiled and smashed it on my head. It was about 45 degrees outside. So that was a sunny-side-up egg for someone. And Dave paid, I think, 50 bucks to do that."
The 24-hour Window Raise-a-Thon begins at 8 a.m. Saturday. The four participants - Geoff MacGillivray, Jake, Melissa Hart and Katherine Chabot may try to get some sleep at some point, it'll depend on how much action there is on the other side of the window.
Last year's event raised $35,000.
feature image via The705Barrie.com
