Spreading the Goat News
Even though hockey fan Joel Nagtegaal of Langley, BC, is sorely disappointed that a May 11 loss took the Vancouver Canucks out of the Stanley Cup playoffs, it’s not getting his goat. Or the more than 640 other goats donated to the (CRWRC) so far since the playoffs began. What started off as a friendly wager among roller-hockey friends to buy goats while growing playoff goatees has spiraled into a viral philanthropic phenomenon.
“Maybe it is the fact that denial is step one of the grieving process, but I woke up this morning to lots of emails from people saying that they are still buying goats,” he wrote in his May 12 Blog entry at Goat Canucks Goat.
The group’s original goal was 16 goats—one for every Canucks win. Thanks to exposure on a donated web site and news coverage on Canada AM, the Vancouver Sun, and the Canucks web site among others, Nagtegaal's "Goat Canucks Goat" campaign received support from across Canada, 43 U.S states, and 58 other countries. The Blog site’s “goat-o-meter” has surpassed its original goat goal by far.
“When we set the goat-o-meter to 100 we thought it was going to take a deep run in the playoffs by the Canucks if we wanted to reach the 100 goat mark. After we reached 100 goats, the goat-o-meter exploded and goats came spilling out the top,” Nagtegaal posted. “We then thought we would set the new goat-o-meter to 500 just for fun. We would have been happy to get half of that. [On May 12] we are at 584 goats. That’s $14,600 worth of goats! No kidding!”
For Nagtegall, hockey and good works have gone hand in stick since he was a kid. His dad told him to welcome other kids to join the game—and if they didn’t have a stick, give them one. More recently, family members mentioned the work of CRWRC.
“While it has been easy for us to buy our goats, CRWRC are the ones who are doing and will do all the work involved with making sure needy people actually get their real, live goat,” Nagtegaal posted.
How will CRWRC make sure families get their goats? Well, not by flying goats wearing Goat Canucks Goat jerseys first class, as The PEAK 105 radio anchor suggested. The goats are purchased where the families live, for example, in Ulungu community, Kenya, where CBC News (Canada) filmed May 13 as a follow up to the Goat Canucks Goat story.
“Families get a female goat, the whole community gets a male. Babies are returned to the community and additional families,” explained CRWRC’s Christina de Jong, on CBC Canada AM. “Goats are sold for income or used for meat or milk.”
These goats will keep on giving long after the 2009 Stanley Cup win. And, Nagtegaal’s not ready to retire his Goat Canucks Goat jersey by a long shot. “Due to the amount of fun and excitement we all had because of Goat Canucks Goat, it would be very fun to make it an annual event,” he posted.” I have no idea where we go from here, but so far it has been amazing.”
To find links to other coverage of the project, visit: Goatlinks.
