OSBURN — The Shoshone Medical Center Foundation spends most of its time working behind the scenes to improve the lives and experiences of the patients at its local facilities.

But the foundation also spends a lot of its time working to improve the Silver Valley community as a whole — and its We Love Our Community fundraiser is an excellent way to be a part of it.

Over the last few months, Foundation Director Ashlee Myles has been buying up gift cards from local businesses and over the next five Fridays those gift cards will be raffled off.

Fundraising has been an integral part of what the foundation does, things like golf tournaments and the Fall Fest auction are incredibly popular, but those special events were not able to happen last year during the pandemic — but that did not stop any of the needs of the local community from growing — in fact it was quite the opposite.

Myles knew that local businesses could use any help that they could get, so she didn’t limit her scope as to the types of businesses she would purchase gift cards for.

“Last year with the foundation, we were not really able to do any fundraisers, so this year we were not going to let COVID get us down,” Myles said. “We tried to spread the love to the entire Shoshone County, so we went all the way from Mullan to Murray and the Bedroom Goldmine, down the river to Cataldo so we got the Snakepit and Timbers, there are some retail businesses too.”

Each gift card is $25 and raffle tickets sell for $5 each with no limit on how many times a person can win.

Myles purchased 50 gift cards and will draw 10 raffle tickets every Friday, beginning this week with the drawings being live streamed on the foundation’s Facebook page.

Tickets can be purchased at Blackboard Marketplace in Wallace, Feed Your Need in Kellogg and Jolt n’ Bolt in Kellogg.

Tickets can also be purchased online at my.cheddarup.com/c/we-love-our-community-gift-card-raffle.

The SMC Foundation recently purchased reusable water bottles for every elementary school student in the Valley, as well as a hands-free refill station at each school.

The Shoshone Medical Center Foundation was organized in 1990, with the purpose of benefiting Shoshone Medical Center and the community it serves.