Land developer pitches in to help hungry students in Langley
The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School campaign has received almost $1 million in requests this year from schools desperate to feed hungry students The story was hardly in the paper when Rick Johal was sending out an email offering to adopt Langley Secondary School’s troubled breakfast program. About 120 students a day arrive hungry and in need […]
Douglas Park: Breakfast and Lunch
As many as 63 children and parents arrive at Langley’s Douglas Park Elementary looking to be fed every morning, coming in as early as 7 a.m. It’s still dark when the first of the families come in to the warmth of the portable parked at the entrance to Douglas Park Elementary in central Langley. This […]
Sir Charles Tupper Secondary: Homework Club Food Program
When he sees how they eat — with that definable difference between healthy teenage appetite and stark hunger — it occurs to Steve Sorrenti that some of the kids in Sir Charles Tupper”s homework club might not have eaten in the previous 24 hours. “It could be their only decent meal of the day. Who […]
Britannia Secondary: Breakfast Program
By the end of October, the breakfast program feeding hungry and impoverished high school students at Britannia Secondary was on life support and about to switched off. “We are out of money,” said principal Alec MacInnes. The program, which feeds about 25 students and siblings, has been available to students for a number of years […]
Holocaust survivor knows ‘what it’s like to be hungry’
There is a poignancy about Jack Kowarsky’s presence among the children being served breakfast in the cramped lunchroom of Surrey’s Bridgeview elementary. In May 1945, when he was the same age as some of the youngest ones now eating scrambled eggs, he miraculously survived the Holocaust. Of an estimated one million Jewish children living in […]
Adopt-a-School 2018: Thousands of children come to school hungry, traumatized by dehumanizing stresses of living in destitution
Within the past few months this newspaper has carried stories concerning poverty that should cause alarm in the minds of most right thinking people. One disclosed that hundreds of homeless children can be found in the Greater Vancouver area — 681 according to a survey. Another spoke of the continuing delay by a B.C. government […]
Adopt-a-School has dispersed $3.8 million to schools over past eight years; Money raised is primarily used to feed students, but provides multiple services
The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School program has sent $567,328 to 94 schools throughout the province this year to help teachers feed, clothe and care for children suffering from poverty. Since AAS began in 2011 – in response to requests from teachers unable to help these children and their families – the program has dispersed $3.8 million […]
Telus donation helps kids keep up with technology
Youth who age out of foster care here face a high risk of addiction, homelessness, unemployability and teenage pregnancy. “That’s been our experience,” said Kathleen Bennett, executive director of the Northwest Inter-Nation Family and Community Services Society, which provides child protection services to six Tsimshian Nations and the Haisla Nation. It’s a bleak future, but the NIFCS […]
Birchland Elementary: Former Seaforth Highlander steps up for Birchland pupils
Trevor Street asks a simple question: “Have you ever been to a country that doesn’t have an education system?” Many people would likely answer no. Street, who runs the Partners Marketing Group in Port Coquitlam, has seen what such a place looks like. Two tours as an infantryman in Afghanistan with the Seaforth Highlanders of […]
CABE: Holidays can be brutal for kids who can’t even look forward to home-cooked meal
The two-week Christmas break is a joy for most students, but not for desperately poor kids, says Erin Watkins, a youth worker at Coquitlam Alternative Basic Education (CABE). “School is closed for two weeks. In here it’s clean, warm – they can’t get high – and they get fed,” Watkins said. “It’s scary for these kids when none of this is available.” […]