| Rebuilding Dreams Regina |
| Contest was rigged/influenced by sponsors |
| 6th of Aug, 2011 by TerryA |
Rebuilding Dreams is a foundation that organizes sponsors, public and private funding to help renovate the home of a underprivileged family. It is a spin-off of the TV program Extreme Home Makeover on ABC. People write in and nominate families, and 5 are chosen by the foundation. Their stories are put on a website, and the public is asked to vote for which family should win. To vote, you must create an account on the website, and you can only vote once every 24 hours. The polls are closed after 3 weeks, the votes are tallied and the foundation deliberates and consults with the sponsors to determine which family wins.
After a winner was chosen, there was an outrage about how the contest was handled. This is the second event the foundation has held, and there was a similar apprehension around the first event as well. These are the know facts:
1) The winning family lives in a newer home in a middle-to-upper-class neighborhood, which only requires minor renovations, and accommodations for a wheelchair. Some of the competing families live in poor neighborhoods with run-down homes, and one family is not even able to live in their home.
2) The online voting appeared to be rigged, with the winning family having the vast majority of the votes (53% of over 10,000 votes) since the first day of voting.
3) An unusual amount of posters and free online ads appeared asking people to vote for the winning family, and some online forum posts suggest that the other competing families were lying about their conditions.
After the winner was announced, there have been reports of people overhearing bragging about how the contest was rigged from the beginning. These speculations include:
1) The sponsors heavily influenced the decision by which home can best showcase their products and services, and not how poor and deprived the family is.
2) The winner of the contest is rumored to have personal connections to sponsors and/or the foundation.
3) The winning family knows people in computer IT, and it is speculated that one or two people generated hundreds of email accounts to dominate the voting results.
The publics general consensus is not based on which family is truly the most in need of a Home Makeover, or about being a sore loser as some forum posts suggest, but how all the facts and speculations appear to be focused on commercialism, sponsor control, and how poor families are leveraged for corporate advertizing. |
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ok, lets get things straight. I am a really good friend of the winning family, and who are you to judge how in need they are when you dont know them!
1) The winning family lives in a newer home in a middle-to-upper-class neighborhood, which only requires minor renovations, and accommodations for a wheelchair. Some of the competing families live in poor neighborhoods with run-down homes, and one family is not even able to live in their home.
a home that was his parents and giving to him because he could not afford to provide a home for his family.
2) The online voting appeared to be rigged, with the winning family having the vast majority of the votes (53% of over 10, 000 votes) since the first day of voting.
Is it the families fault that they know many people?!?!?! Would you blame them of being well loved in the community for their big hearts, community involvment, and volunteering, ??? When you sit for a week calling every person you have ever come in contact with in your whole life begging them to vote for you and asking them to please get their family members and freinds to vote to, i think then you deserve to win. I blows my mind that you just cant be happy for others. are you the selfish???
3) An unusual amount of posters and free online ads appeared asking people to vote for the winning family, and some online forum posts suggest that the other competing families were lying about their conditions.
And where would this be, do you have proof even??? I have been following this everyday and have not seen a single thing.
And as for the rest, i hope you understand that slander is a crime, and you should maybe speak with the family or the organization before you start pointing fingers. To go as far as saying they hacked computers, or had "connections" is horrible. I think you may just be jealous.
And for the record, this family was happy to volunteer to help with the build for any family that won. The member of this family would give anything and everything to anyone in need, whether it be a friend, family member, or a random person on the street, and they would do it without a question.
It seems to me like you are the only selfish person in regina that cant take a minute to walk in someone elses shoes and see what its like to not be able to look after your daughter, see what its like to have to be carried around the house because your chair doesnt fit in any hallways or rooms, or for you to see what its like having thousands of dollars worth of medical bills stack up every month because public health wont cover your "rare" condition. Shame on you for even questioning a organization like rebuilding dreams. They are all good people, and you are nothing more than a peice of...!!! |
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http://www.basementrenovationottawa.com/news/basement-renovation-news/giving-back-in-an-extreme-way-regina-leader/
maybe you shoudl read this very carefully. |
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I know each of the families through friends and used to work at Wascana Rehab with one of the contestants. I have to say as much as the Strong family needed the help, the families whom desperately needed it was the Karney-Guitard and Nagy family. The Karney family has no home and lives with their five children in a hotel. What kind of life is that for five young children? The Nagy family again also has five children, and although they have a home, their one son has autism which has virtually no recognition within Saskatchewan. Their other son has problems learning and understanding things, and has very little social skills or proper behavioural skills, like their autistic son. Those boys bedroom is in an uninsulated and unheated basement for the winter! How does that help them?! Yet they still go strong supporting others when they can barely support themselves, taking in respite disabled foster children, making sure their kids have the needs to get a good education including standing up to the school board in person, working a total of five jobs just to barely make ends meet, but always there for others.
Many people whom voted for both these families including government agencies believe it was also rigged. There is no possible way that the Strong family took the majority votes within the first half hour which did happen and go from there. |
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I am currently working on the winning family's home!!! THIS IS A WONDERFUL THING FOR A FAMILY IN NEED... WE SHOULD BE HAPPY AT THE FACT OF THE GENEROUS SPONSORSHIP OF THE WINNING FAMILY'S HOME MAKEOVER.
DO NOT TURN THIS INTO A FIGHTING CONTEST BECAUSE IT IS MEANT TO BE A BEAUTIFUL WAY OF BRINGING THE COMMUNITY TOGETHER!!!
MAYBE YOU ALL NEED TO STOP COMPLAINING AND PICK UP A HAMMER OR A BROOM AND HELP OUT. IT MIGHT MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER ABOUT YOURSELF!!!
POSTED BY: MAT @ FINE TUNE CONSTRUCTION (REGINA) |
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Ever think that I have been there several times?! Treehouse looks great! Drywall went up easily along with the plumbing going in and such. All I'm saying is that there were two families that were more in need, and instead of it going to a family on the basis of their home structure, a home that was in incredible condition (and I was there for some of the demolition), it could have gone to a family that had many, many problems with their home. Instead, it became a popularity contest.
Makes you think though. I saw one of the top contestants there; the only ones out of them all that has come out to help. |
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| We do not know the Strong family but do live in the area. We have been helping out at the home for the past three week. We would like to know where you get off saying that the sponsors had a lot of influence. Did you know that not all sponsors were on board until the project was well under way. Well I do. Our family has been doing ever thing from framing. moving dirt and sand to painting.. What have you been doing. As for the family that has no home. How can a home make over be done when there is no home. Has this family ever applied to Habitat, or do they also have the fix in on who get a NEW home. We also volunteer for habitat and have met a lot of families that get these homes, as they not only work on their our home but that of others. I say congratulations to the Rebuilding Dreams Team. They are filling in a space for people in need that have no where else to turn. What have you done. |
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| Funny I should find this. I worked for one of the main sponsors, and they wouldn't get onboard until they agreed on what house was picked. And if we didn't get onboard, others wouldn't have either. Yeah, lots of work was needed to their house, but we sure a hell didn't have to rebuld the entire thing. I don't know any of the families, but personally I would have picked the homeless one. Rebuilding Dreams is great and has lots of super people helping, but they really blew it picking the family with the nicest house. If they do it again this year, I hope they handle it better and don't assume the public is completely stupid. |
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| There is a lot to be said about all of this as my family was the "chosen family" in 2009. Remember if something sounds to good to be true it probably is. We are still healing from this disaster. |
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we were one of the top six families with one relative (the winner) as well as good family friends as part of it as well. When we found out on Canada Day that we were being considered and hadn't even applied, we literally broke down in tears. Imagine this, I'm at work hosting a wedding in the facility I work in and my husband calls me in tears telling me about this phone call that he had recieved. I literally broke down in tears just as the bridal party was coming into the building past my desk! We were ecstatic and honoured to be chosen. After so many years of giving to the community and others, we thought WOW, someone is thinking of us! What a wonderful feeling! We had just moved into a bigger home, but it had many problems. My husband worked full-time and is actually the designer for ALL Habitat Homes in Canada for their plumbing systems. We don't bring a lot of income in due to me giving up nursing to be home with the children and slowly working on a Social Work Degree specializing in disabilities (this has been put on hold due to the extreme amount of student loans I have). During this time, we were going through a very rough patch as our autistic son was going through genetic testing for Tuberous Sclerosis and our little guy for Cystic Fibrosis. knowing that we made the top 6, uplifted our spirits during this time. The recognition when we went out was phenomenol...people would come up to us as we were shopping or out at the farmers market and ask us if we were the Nagy family and would always say we voted for you. We felt blessed. During the one month time of voting towards the end, we had learned more about the other families through us volunteering for several fundraisers for rebuilding dreams. We realized that we weren't the most needy, and as much as it would have alleviated the pressure on us financially to finish our home to best suit the childrens needs, we decided together that if we were chosen, we would ask that the Karney-Guitard family be the recipiants. We knew what bullying in school can do to a person physically and mentally...our son felt it for many years because he was so different. I also knew what MS can do to a family...to the children and such due to my work in a level 4 care ward specializing in MS at Wascana Rehabilitiation when I was a nurse, and I myself felt sympathetic to their five children and what they could be missing with their mom. After we recieved the call that we did not win, I won't lie...we were disappointed, however many saw us there volunteering our own time and efforts on the house and providing snacks for workers involved. We have always had the belief that helping others is a rewarding experience!
No matter what really happened with Rebuilding Dreams...the sponsership scuffles, the money, the volunteering...what matters is that someone had the heart to look around and see that there were people stuck and unable to move forward due to unforseen circumstances whether it be illness or an accident. They tried to change the city and those peoples lives, and it is unfortunate that it not only came in a positive way, but also in a negative way for not only the recipiants but also for that person involved. I will say this though, I will and I'm sure my children will carry this experience with them for a very long time, knowing that there were people that thought of us and said hey, we appreciate all that you do. |
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