Adopt-A-School: $1.2 million in grants given out to schools and organizations
“We have never had so many requests for help before. It is a measure of our readers’ concern and generosity that we have been able to meet these requests.” — Harold Munro, editor-in-chief of The Vancouver Sun and board chair. The Vancouver Sun Children’s Fund board has approved 121 grants totalling $1.2 million in recent […]
Adopt-A-School: Resilience in children should never be confused with tragedy
By recognizing “resilience” as anything other than a tragedy in the life of an impoverished child — and to speak of it as something vaguely admirable — is to ignore the conditions that caused it, no matter how well meaning the observer. Last spring Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician in Flint, Michigan, whose relentless advocacy […]
Adopt-A-School: Hunger, poverty not limited to just inner-city schools
Although the school boundary stretches all the way north to within 40 kilometres of Egmont and south down the bucolic highway to Sechelt, Pender Harbour Elementary-Secondary school has just 75 students. The small, rural school over which principal Chris Lekakis presides, with its totems out front on the Sunshine Coast Highway, isn’t immune from the […]
Adopt-A-School: 16-year-old homeless girl survives with the help of Safe Schools team
“I became homeless in the summer of 2019. But in my heart I knew I’d never had a home, I never had stability.” — 16-year-old homeless girl The Christmas Eve story is about homelessness and so is this: the story of a homeless teenager searching for a safe place for the night. Violence, abuse, depression […]
Adopt-A-School: Britannia Secondary wants to dismantle barriers
“If food is not a factor, and (adequate) clothing is not a problem, students can focus on what matters most which is their education and development.” — Britannia Secondary School principal Alec MacInnes The effects of poverty in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside resulting in inadequate food, inadequate clothing, lack of ordinary necessities from toothpaste to laundry […]
Coquitlam’s Encompass Alternative program staff have been giving until it hurts
Principal Lisa Dubé, youth worker Karin Leathwood and others at Coquitlam’s Encompass Alternative program — with their families, friends and acquaintances — know how it feels to give till it hurts. Over the years The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School (AAS) campaign has found many instances of staff reaching into their pockets to help needy students. But […]
Adopt-A-School: COVID-19 has made things tough at Nakusp Secondary School
Nakusp Secondary School principal Peter Gajda is asking The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt A School campaign for $5,000 to provide more food and hot meals each week. NAKUSP — It sounds like an apology but it’s really a joke when Peter Gajda says that for people who don’t know much about the town it’s usually described […]
Adopt-A-School: London Drugs steps up to assist kids at inner city schools
“Being able to give back to those in need in the communities we serve is paramount to London Drugs. Especially this year, we want to do as much as we possibly can to make the holidays brighter for families and for those who are most vulnerable in our communities.” — Edwin Chang, London Drugs store […]
Adopt-A-School: Improving the life chances for students
NANAIMO — Brett Hancock, principal of the alternative school system in Nanaimo, has learned that for a number of his students facing financial hardships, academic success can be explained by a simple equation: food + clothes = graduation. That is why he is grateful to the Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School campaign for providing the food and […]
Adopt-A-School: A little help with necessities keeps a family going
Surrey school district’s Welcome Centre and the Safe Schools Wraparound program tap Adopt-A-School in effort to keep kids at risk on a healthy path The lot of the Soleil family, which came to Surrey in 2009 as refugees from the Congo wars, can be summed up in two words: triumph and tragedy. Much of what […]