The first-ever "Help Children Hear" lottery is currently underway and features a big-ticket draw that includes a $50,000 grand prize or a new Ford or Dodge truck or $1,000 a week for a year. That’s in addition to a 50/50 draw that also expected to bring in plenty of cash to the service organization’s coffers – and provide a nice boost of summer cash to a lucky winner.
“If we sell out the 50/50 and the main lottery, we should be around the $250,000 mark,” said lottery chair and longtime Moose Jaw Elks member, Harold Claffey. “It would be nice to have too much money and looking for places to put it instead of looking places to find it. With COVID-19, I don’t know how likely that is, though…We’re just encouraging people to buy tickets and hoping for a sell-out.”
Tickets for the main draw are $50 each, and have a limited run of only 4,000. In addition to the main prizes, there are 11 other draws for trips and cash, with an early bird draw on May 14 and the main draw on June 13.
The 50/50 is also expected to do well, featuring $10 tickets, four for $20 and 15 for $50. As of April 28, the pot already sat at $5,070 with the winner taking half. With 62,000 tickets available, the winner will receive over $100,000 on a sell-out
The idea to create a large-scale provincial lottery came out of similar ventures that have taken place across the province.
“We’ve had two or three different lotteries that were three-for-five dollar tickets and we just weren’t selling enough to break even anymore,” Claffey explained. “So we came up with this idea because large-ticket-price lotteries seem to go really well in Saskatchewan and we put a 50/50 with it because those are popular in Saskatchewan as well.”
All proceeds from the event will remain in the province – and anyone wondering just how effective those funds are used just has to look at the Saskatchewan Pediatric Auditory Rehabilitation Centre at the University of Saskatchewan.
“We founded SPARC over 40 years ago and we’re one of the main fundraisers for them,” Claffey said.
“You see those videos all over the internet, where the child has the cochlear implants turned on for the first time? That was pioneered here in Saskatchewan by SPARC, which was directly funded by the Elks. So the Elk’s are directly responsible for developing cochlear implants, and that happened right here in Saskatchewan.”
The lottery has been set up to be completely pandemic-proof.
Tickets can be purchased by debit or credit card by calling toll-free 1-833-769-0100, with 50/50 tickets e-mailed within moments of purchase and main draw tickets sent by mail.
The main draw date for all prizes is June 13.
