SVAR



Contact:

Joe Croce

jcroce@

804-520-4496

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 10, 2014

Pedaling across state, cyclist shares awareness message with Southside REALTORS®, hopes to inspire partnerships to help seniors

COLONIAL HEIGHTS —The Southside Virginia Association of REALTORS® welcomed a fellow REALTOR® with a cause to its Colonial Heights headquarters on July 9.

Drake Van de Castle, a Crozet resident and REALTOR® member of the Charlottesville Area Association of REALTORS®, is pedaling across Virginia on a month-long Bike for Seniors campaign. His mission is to raise awareness of, and donations for, senior citizens who need financial assistance when they can’t afford necessary home repairs. Van de Castle also seeks to heighten awareness among REALTOR® associations and housing nonprofits along his 1,000-mile journey, which began July 1 in Chincoteague and will end July 31 in Bristol.

As part of his trip, Van de Castle is visiting local REALTORS® associations throughout the state, including the Southside group. Several members of SVAR’s board met with Van de Castle to hear about Seniors Safe at Home, a program of the Albemarle Housing Improvement Program (AHIP, and his endeavor to raise money, in part, for the home-repair nonprofit’s senior-centric efforts. Through Seniors Safe at Home, AHIP partners with the Blue Ridge Home Builders Association, among other groups, to provide critical home repairs to those low-income residents 62 and older in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.

By sharing background about the AHIP/Blue Ridge builders’ group collaboration, Van de Castle said he hopes to inspire the formation of a similar Southside Virginia-based collaboration to help keep local senior citizens “safe in their homes,” too. As part of the goodwill effort between fellow REALTORS®, SVAR member Libby Gatewood, associate broker/appraiser with Napier REALTORS® ERA in Colonial Heights, hosted Van de Castle for a brief break from cycling.

Van de Castle, an avid photographer, is documenting his bicycle trip and Virginia’s scenery in pictures; all of the proceeds from the photographs will be donated to his $10,000 fundraising goal, he said. Of that total, $5,000 will go to AHIP’s Seniors Safe at Home, and the remaining $5,000 will be donated to five collaborations – like the proposed Southside one – in the form of $1,000 grants to jumpstart new home-repair programs for seniors.

“Drake is a fellow Virginia Leadership Academy graduate, who is demonstrating his leadership skills to promote a worthy cause. He and other REALTORS® often put themselves out in the community to help where there is a need,” said SVAR President John Brockwell of Weichert REALTORS®, Brockwell & Portwood in Colonial Heights, who met with Van de Castle. “Drake is a great example of REALTORS®’ interest in giving a helping hand.”

“Drake should be an inspiration to us all.  His dedication to this program and helping our senior citizens is something we should all consider as a worthy goal that we should support,” added Joe Croce, SVAR’s CEO.

For a video featuring Van de Castle, or to donate, go to . For more information about AHIP, visit . For learn more about the Southside Virginia Association of REALTORS®, go to . .

The Southside Virginia Association of REALTORS® is a professional organization dedicated to promoting excellence in real estate business practices and advocating on behalf of the interests of private property owners. Its members also are members of the 29,000-member Virginia Association of REALTORS® as well as the National Association of REALTORS®. SVAR encompasses Colonial Heights, Hopewell, Petersburg, Chester, Emporia and Ettrick, and Dinwiddie, Greensville, Prince George, Surry and Sussex counties and much of Chesterfield County.

The term REALTOR® is a registered collective membership mark that identifies a real estate professional who is an active member of the National Association of REALTORS®. For more info on SVAR, go to .

###

Cutline (Photo courtesy SVAR):

SVARcyclist.jpg: Charlottesville-area REALTOR® Drake Van de Castle, right, is bicycling across Virginia on a month-long Bike for Seniors campaign to raise awareness of, and donations for, senior citizens who need financial assistance when they can’t afford necessary home repairs. As part of his journey he visited the Southside Virginia Association of REALTORS® headquarters in Colonial Heights on July 9 and met with, from left, Hank Duarte of Century 21 Colonial Realty, SVAR immediate past president; John Brockwell of Weichert REALTORS®, Brockwell & Portwood, SVAR president; David Patsel of Napier REALTORS® ERA, SVAR president-elect; and Joe Croce, SVAR CEO.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download