Kids on Salt Spring Island not immune to poverty and hunger
A small notice taped to the counter near the checkout in Mouat’s hardware store in Ganges showed Gulf Island schools are no more immune to the evils of childhood hunger than those in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. This might be a shock to travellers who pass by these beautiful islands, where the shorelines are lined with […]
Young parents get a helping hand; Adopt-A-School program helps ease stress of holiday season
Baby Kellan didn’t wait for Christmas for a present, he just dipped a hand into one of the many London Drug gift bags sitting on a table in Coquitlam’s Alternate Basic Education school (CABE) and pulled out a toy. His mom, 18-year-old Raven Conlinn – a single parent coping with raising an eight-month-old while attending […]
Helping with attendance a step toward graduation
Joe Leibovitch has run schools in Toronto, but never had anything like Surrey’s Attendance Matters to help him deal with the professional agony of seeing a child’s future being decided by chronic absenteeism. According to research, it is possible to determine by Grade 3 which children will go on to graduation and post-secondary education. Children […]
Students raise $11,400 for hungry children selling cupcakes
The mothers of Jessica Atkinson and Anna Julia Rogo must have thought they had seen the last of the cupcakes after their eight-yearolds sold 55 home-baked ones to raise money for The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School campaign. This netted $298.80 in bills and loose coins, which the two York House School students carried into The Vancouver […]
Surrey’s Wrap Around team supports teens
In Surrey’s highways and byways they are known as the Wrap Around Team – 15 school liaison staff and their RCMP associates who help juveniles rated at extreme risk for homelessness, addiction, gang affiliation or sexual exploitation. The ultimate risk is death. But Jon Ross, a school district social worker, likes to contemplate the successes, […]
Some kids go hungry when school closes; Many students don’t get services they need when the holidays arrive Vancouver Sun
When Sarah McKay and other members of the Surrey school district’s Wraparound Team contemplate the Christmas holiday, it’s with dread, not joy. The team cares for 80 of the most at-risk students in the city – which has a school population of 72,000 – and another 50 or so off the side of their desks. […]
100 cases of donated tuna goes far to fight hunger; Five schools will share generous donation from Blundell Seafoods
Three Vancouver and two Surrey schools will share 100 cases of tuna donated by Richmond’s Blundell Seafoods for families living in poverty as part of the company’s donation to The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School campaign. “I’ve been reading stories in The Sun and have been touched by the plight of families that don’t have enough to […]
Helping bridge weekend hunger gap; Money will create cooking program, emergency fund to buy clothes, shoes
The poor could give seminars on the gaps in their lives. The gaps without food, without money, without bare necessities – if they have plenty of anything, it’s gaps. So it’s fitting that when Tracey MacKinlay and Pam Bragagnolo stepped up to help impoverished families at east Vancouver’s Queen Alexandra Elementary, they came to fill […]
School wants to help feed poor children again; Institution in gentrifying area lost special funding amid housing boom
Until recently Mount Pleasant Elementary school was designated inner-city and eligible for special funding from the Vancouver School Board to help its poorest of families. But that’s finished. It had a free breakfast and lunch program – now reduced to just 13 bag lunches for the neediest of children – while other services designed to […]
Single working parents get welcome lift: After-school programs provide invaluable help
It’s a story that crops up in almost every school – the single mother working morning, noon and night for minimum wage and still unable to feed her children properly. As a composite, she’s a symbol of hopeless fortitude as well as a rebuke to those who equate poverty with indolence. And here she comes […]