Adopt-a-School: Tupper Secondary art sale benefits children in need
More than 1,000 sumptuous pieces of art — photographic prints laminated on vinyl and mounted on boards ready to hang — will be on sale this weekend at Sir Charles Tupper Secondary. Proceeds from the sale will be split between the Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School campaign and the school’s arts program. “These are beautiful prints and […]
Adopt-a-School: Refugees tell their stories
Adopt-A-School: Booklet helps refugee students in Surrey The program is operated from the school district’s English Language Learning centre on King George Boulevard, and the Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School program is being asked for $6,000 to help support it. The booklet is a sparsely written 24 pages, but if anyone wants to understand the trauma and […]
Adopt-A-School: Renu Bakshi picks up tab for needy kids in Nanaimo
NANAIMO — Before she started her own Vancouver media company, Renu Bakshi was a CTV reporter, so it’s no wonder that when she decided to help impoverished children here at Brechin Elementary she would come and see for herself. The float-plane ride from Vancouver to Nanaimo only takes 20 minutes, but what Bakshi found once […]
Adopt-A-School: Vancouver dentist helps take bite out of hunger for city children
The Backpack Buddies program out of Lord Selkirk elementary feeds as many as 65 families each weekend out of a school of 745 students. From the large windows in her dental office, Dr. Joyce Chan can see children making their way across Kingsway to Lord Selkirk, the largest elementary school in Vancouver, located a few […]
Adopt-a-School: Brechin Elementary in Nanaimo needs help supporting students with basic needs
Adopt-A-School: Inner-city school in Nanaimo needs help supporting students with basic needs Privation is the reason a recent University of B.C. study found 55 per cent of kindergarten kids in Brechin Elementary were educationally vulnerable. It doesn’t take academic studies and statistics to prove what principal Kim Hart sees every day — that when it […]
Adopt-a-School: Holly Elementary Emergency Fund
It would be an exaggeration to say Shauna Milne and her two sons are living in Surrey. Existing would be nearer the truth. Sitting in the principal’s office of Holly Elementary, the single mom explains with admirable stoicism the difference between living and living in poverty. “Do we have enough to eat? No. My kids […]
Adopt-a-School: ELL Welcome Centre Bridge Program
When refugees arrive in Surrey two pieces of information are indispensable: Directions to the nearest food bank and how to find their way to the ELL Welcome Centre on King George Boulevard. The food bank’s importance is obvious for people existing on government assistance that won’t keep them adequately fed, clothed and housed. But the […]
Adopt-a-School: Bridgeview – Needs often go beyond food
Surrey principal Diana Ellis doesn’t cry very often at work, but she shed tears the day she found help for seven-year-old Anisa. Anisa is autistic, non-verbal, and was coming to school in agony from a mouth full of rotten teeth. “When I was told Adopt-A-School would help us I just cried, her mom cried. We […]
Adopt-a-School: Greater Heights Learning Academy Lunches
Greater Heights Learning Academy teaches special needs students from 13 municipalities in the Lower Mainland, arriving from as far away as Abbotsford and West Vancouver. The spectre of childhood hunger can be found in all corners of this province, including an independent school in Coquitlam where tuition fees range from $16,000 to $18,000 a year. […]
Adopt-A-School: Some North Delta Secondary students arrive hungry and with no lunch
Principal Aaron Akune can’t do anything to alleviate the poverty found beyond the boundaries of North Delta Secondary, but he can certainly try when he finds it on school property. His school of 1,100 students on 82nd Ave. and 114th St. is in the middle of an area where the contrast between financially comfortable and […]