MEDICINE HAT, AB — After struggling with memberships and fundraising just a month ago, a historic Medicine Hat club has bounced back.
“Everything is coming along very nicely,” says James Paulson, president of the Medicine Hat Astronomy Club.
The club has increased its members, attendance of classes and its social media influence.
“Five members adds a lot of manpower to the organization so to speak,” says Paulson.
At the beginning of January, the Astronomy Club put a call out to local volunteers, saying they needed more support.
It worked, in the past month, five new members have joined the club, and three classes they host for young people sold out within a couple of hours.
On top of that, their follower count on their Facebook page has increased drastically, and one impressive photo has reached almost an impressive audience.
“Our social media has exploded, we’re up to almost 900 followers on our Facebook page as of right now,” says Paulson. “We had one of our members take a photo of the lunar eclipse that went viral on us and reached about 250,000 people in the end.”
Now, they’re continuing to work towards their goal of updating their current telescope by applying for a government grant.
“We’ve been putting together a very nice packaged,” says Paulson. “We’re looking at quite a modified instrument by comparison to what we have up there right now.”
For information on their programs, visit the Facebook page or website.
