On the weekend of June 18, the “Race for Recovery” charity fundraiser took place at the Town N’ Country Mall, hosted by Swervin’ Mini Indy for the OSI-CAN charity.
A total of five gas and six electric powered go-karts participated, with the electric go-karts being raced by high school students from Moose Jaw, Saskatoon, North Battleford, and the Regina area. These students collaborated with technicians from various Ford dealerships to replace the gas-powered components with an electric engine and battery pack, making the go-karts fully electric.
The races officially began at noon and was projected to end late in the afternoon, with votes tabulated by 4:30 pm.
The races were staggered between electric and gas, continuing until all the karts had raced.
The races, judged on a point system, included “Race for Recovery”, the “Fastest Pit Change”, the “Fastest Lap”, the “Most Sportsmanlike”, and the “Student EV Challenge.”
The Regina Legion took home the “Race for Recovery” trophy, making this their first time in winning that trophy in five years.
Moose Jaw’s own Vanier Velocity team took home three of the five trophies, winning the “Fastest Lap”, the “Fastest Pit Change”, and the “Student EV Challenge”.
The Piapot First Nation team took home the most sportsmanlike trophy.
Swervin’ Mini Indy, was founded in 2010 by Mervin Armstrong and began as a charity event management company. This will mark their 11th year of using go-karts as a vessel to raise money for charities. In the past, they have partnered up with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada where they raised close to $90,000 over the course of 6 years. Since then, they have been supporting OSI-CAN, an Operational Stress Injury/ Post Traumatic Stress support initiative, which was started in 2016.
They offer peer support groups, family support groups, assistance with service dog acquisition, and equine therapy programs. Its goal is to empower and encourage its target demographic to strive for recovery, resiliency, and post-traumatic growth through self-determination, and to create better public awareness. OSI-CAN hopes to create a society where getting help for mental health is as normalized as visiting the dentist.
"I would like to thank the community of Moose Jaw for hosting this. In previous years, we have hosted this in Regina, but with the invitation from the community of Moose Jaw we decided to do it here, and we have received nothing but a huge amount of support from the Moose Jaw community," said Julius Brown, representative of the OSI-CAN charity.
To learn more about the OSI-CAN charity you can visit their website at https://www.osi-can.ca/
