Bridges to Community Raises $150,000 at Spring Gala; Sadie and Rick Bauman & the BTC Canada Honored
Bridges to Community honored Rick and Sadie Bauman and their committed group of Canadians by presenting them with the “2011 Outstanding Vision and Commitment to Action” Award at the annual Spring Gala on May 6 held in White Plains, New York. The yearly event raised nearly $150,000 to support Bridges’ ongoing efforts in Nicaragua, building homes, schools, sanitation projects as well as providing health care, economic assistance and education.
This remarkable couple had a vision - to build 100 homes in five years for impoverished families in Nicaraguawith Bridges to Community. By November 2011, along with their fellow BTC Canada members, they will be completing this “mission impossible,” raising over $400,000 to complete their dream and change the lives of 100 families who are now living in safe, new homes.
Both Rick and Sadie Bauman are widely recognized within the property and casualty insurance industry, not only in Canadabut throughout North America. After successfully building an insurance brokerage company in Hamilton, Ontario, Rick Bauman left in 1995 to start an insurance training and coaching business developing the “Vertical Growth Network.” Today he is the CEO of IC3 (Intellectual Capital Coaching Corporation). Sadie Bauman also has had an extensive career in the property and casualty insurance business. She was a commercial underwriter and then an independent insurance training business owner before joining her husband at IC3.
“We were fascinated by the Bridges’ model that the organization should function as a catalyst not a crutch to those people that we help. It is a leadership training and service model similar to what we use in our businesses,” said Bauman. “We have seen people in Nicaraguawho are uneducated stand up and do presentations to us and we are both amazed and impressed with them.”
In 2005 Rick Bauman first heard of the Bridges to Community programs in Nicaraguawhile at an insurance conference. Since then, he and Sadie have made at least one trip per year to build homes in this second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. In 2006 they formed a Bridges to Community Canadian group and annually have led a growing number of their countrymen and women to volunteer with them. Rick Bauman joined the Bridges to Community board of the directors in 2009 and is currently the chair of the organization’s business leaders group.
“The Canadian vision has happened thanks to over 200 people and a hard working board. This recognition is not about us but the people we are representing,” stated the Baumans.
