Jeff Colbourne
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 21/98) - Since losing all core funding from the department of health and social services in March, St. John Ambulance has been kept busy in recent months fundraising.

Over the weekend a steak and lobster dinner and art auction -- at $40 a pop -- was held. All proceeds went to St. John Ambulance. On Wednesday, Deputy Mayor Blake Lyons, on behalf of the city of Yellowknife, donated $10,000 to the group.

"We have really just started fundraising.... We will be starting a large fundraising campaign in the fall as part of celebrating our 900 years for the order of St. John. So we're having our millennium celebration in 1999," said Nancy Heimbach, director of St. John Ambulance.

St. John Ambulance runs the cadet youth corp program, the brigade, adult volunteer service which offers volunteer first aid attendant service at community events and does emergency response in the event of a major disaster.

St. John has three staff. Most of their work is administrative in nature. Staff coordinates events but volunteers provide the service with all money collected going to St. John.

Most chapters of St. John Ambulance in the south receive funding from United Way. Unfortunately, the North does not have a United Way, said Heimbach.

"We used to get $95,000 (from the GNWT each year) and it takes that. By the time you look at having staff to coordinate all of this, do the training for the volunteers, to supply them with medical equipment... there's a lot of expensive, specialized equipment and a lot of training," said Heimbach.

In the past, St. John has gone after funding by running events like bingos, penny drives and by approaching both levels of government.

Closing down St. John because of limited funds has never been an option for them, she said.

"We do make some money on the training. Enough to cover a good part of the administrative cost. We need the funding in order to maintain the volunteer service and that's a very important part of what we do."