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 […]
For some children, school is as close to family as they will get
It takes only a few paragraphs written by the principal of one learning centre to another to lay bare the tragedy of a young life. The details are so stark, there’s no need for any amplification. On Nov. 19 at 9:47 a.m., Jim Mc-Connell, principal of Surrey’s City Central Learning Centre finds this in his […]
Chilliwack’s Watson Elementary needs help feeding 50 hungry kids a day
For Elaine Arsenault the beautiful moments at school far outweigh the ugly. “I’ve been head-butted, spat upon, I’ve been called a crackhead and worse,” said the child and youth care worker in Chilliwack’s Watson Elementary school. But then a child who looks like he could be a model for one of Raphael’s angels will come […]
Children will go hungry in Surrey school if breakfast program is lost
Surrey principal Angelo Morelli says it would be a tragedy if his school, K.B. Woodward Elementary in Whalley, ever lost its breakfast program which feeds up to 60 hungry children every day. “The kids need breakfast because often their parents can’t provide it,” says Morelli. “This is a lovely school with great kids, but we are […]
Program at Sir Charles Tupper secondary school helps teen parents graduate
Seventeen-year-old Rena Nadeau admitted there was a time she considered dropping out of school. Eighteen months ago, she was pregnant and it looked like her school days were over. “I was on the verge of dropping out,” says Nadeau, as her nine-month-old baby, Kaesen, sits on her lap. “I was at Van Tech and I didn’t […]