Calgary Foundation

If friends so desire, memorial tributes may be made directly to The Lindsay Rachel Giacomelli Memorial Fund.  The goal of the fund is to keep Lindsay’s name and presence alive, and to reflect her generous and caring spirit.

As a university student, on a limited budget, Lindsay still found funds to donate to charities such as World Vision, the Tsunami Relief Effort and the Juno Beach Centre, which was built to recognize the sacrifice of Canadian WWII veterans.

Each year, the proceeds of the fund will be donated to a charity or charities which reflect Lindsay’s interests.

The initial grant in 2006 was directed to the Calgary Zoo in support of Lindsay’s interest in the new Elephant House.

In 2007, the fund grant went to The Military Museum located in Calgary, Alberta.  Click  for more info...

And in 2008 the Memorial Fund donated to the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation, in support of the Rotary / Flames House, Alberta’s first hospice for children, and only the 6th hospice for children in North America.

The donation for 2009 was made to the Calgary Health Trust in support of required equipment for the Intensive Care Unit of the Foothills Hospital.

The donation for 2010 was made to the Alberta Ballet. In recognition of Lindsay’s involvement in dance through the University of Calgary and with the School of Alberta Ballet, the Lindsay Rachel Giacomelli Memorial Fund will designate its primary donation to the “Artist Fund at Alberta Ballet”.  See the dedication to Lindsay from the Alberta Ballet in the Sleeping Beauty playbill from last October's performance.

In 2011, we donated to two primary recipients; the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation in support of the Special Children’s Fund, and the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Regiment (PPCLI) Museum and Archives Gallery Renovation. 

For 2012, the primary donation will be made to The Mustard Seed, in support of their affordable housing initiative. The Mustard Seed has been successfully housing our homeless neighbors since 1994. In 2007 they formulated a plan to create a purpose-built, affordable housing tower that would provide much-needed housing for the homeless of Calgary. The total cost of the initiative is $60.5 MM. The Mustard Seed public campaign has been set at $20 MM and to date approximately $11 MM has been raised. 

The 2013 primary donation will be made to The Calgary Health Trust in support of equipment at the Foothills Medical Centre Intensive Care Unit. A Total Care Sport bed from Hill-Rom ($42,000) and a Codman monitor ($8,300).  

In 2014 the fund grant was made to the The Alberta Adolescent Recovery Centre (AARC). AARC is an accredited not for profit long-term intensive treatment centre for chemically addicted adolescents between the ages of 13 and 21. AARC is often the last hope for adolescents and their families. The families have tried other alternatives and have had no success. By the time they reach the doors of AARC their lives are in ruins and the family is desperate for help. You slowly watch your child destroy their life. We are extremely happy to assisting AARC.

For 2015, the primary donation was made to to the Kids Help Phone. Thanks in part to your support, Kids Help Phone can be there for the 725,000 young people in Alberta between the ages of 5 and 20 – approximately 20% of the province’s population.

Kids rely on the Help Phone for help with a wide variety of issues, from struggles with mental health to cyber-bullying, self-harm and abuse, relationships at home and school, and everything between. In fact, they reach out to the counsellors over 500 times every single day in one of the following ways:

• By phone – immediate and available anytime. Kids from 181 communities in Alberta reached out to Kids Help Phone by phone in 2013 , and calls from Alberta represented 10.1% of all calls to Kids Help Phone last year. This means approximately 58 kids from Alberta called the phone service each day in 2013.
  
  
• Through Live Chat – online and in real-time, available four nights a week. Requests for Live Chat counselling from Alberta represented 7.9% of all Live Chat requests in 2013.
  
  
• Through Ask Us Online – an online forum where young people submit anonymous questions and receive a time-delayed written response from a counsellor. Ask Us Online posts from Alberta represented 15.2% of the web post counselling service in 2013.
  
  
• Just as kids struggle with their emotions and life challenges, Kids Help Phone is struggling to keep up with the youth needing the services. When a child calls the counselling line, the average wait time in 2013 was only 26 seconds before one of the professional, caring counsellors answered the call.
  
  
• The donation from Lindsay’s fund will assist in making the Ask Us Online to be open more of the time and will assist expanding the service hours for Live Chat so more kids can receive support through online chat and spend less time waiting in the queue.

Over the years 2006 through 2015 the Fund has also donated every year to The Light Up Papua New Guinea Project in memory of Captain Nichola Goddard. This will help put solar powered LED lighting systems into medical clinics in isolated villages in Papua New Guinea

Please feel free to contact us at any time with any questions concerning Lindsay or the Fund. You can contact us through the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.