Every year three of our offices try to raise money for the United Way, a foundation dedicated to improving lives and building communities. It focuses on specific problems most relevant to each community such as poverty for the Peel region. In previous years, a letter was sent around, a speaker from United Way would come in and the volunteers would collect dontations for the cause through pledges. This year was the first year I joined and to help promote the event I was tasked with creating various posters.

One of the posters advertised what could be won if you pledged - various draws were held with prizes to help encourage donations - another to show how much impact your donation would make, and a third to combat a vicious rumour that was being propagated around Facebook, a lie which stated more money was going to the people working at the charity rather than the people the charity was supposed to be helping. To combat that rumour, on the poster I showed the breakdown of the United Way's spending, showing that their operations and advertising costs were at 20.4%, which is significantly lower than the threshold the Canada Revenue Agency sets at 35%. The rest of their money was invested in the community.

If you want to find out more about the United Way in the peel region visit: www.unitedwaypeel.org.