Strathcona students among the most needy of all
Each day, staff prepare and provide as many as 270 grab-and-go breakfasts for students of Lord Strathcona Elementary. It’s 8:30 a.m. and some of the children coming into the Strathcona Community Centre for breakfast are tired, some are chirpy, but they are all hungry. They enter up a flight of stairs at the back of […]
Kwalikum secondary needs help providing for basics
“The cost of necessities are often unattainable for some families and we want to help. This child needs glasses. It’s not a whim.” QUALICUM BEACH — This community with its sweeping views of Georgia Strait, its sandy beaches and pastoral quiet has long been regarded as a retirement haven for those no longer enamoured with […]
David McCann keeps on giving to help keep kids fed
Despite doctor’s order to slow down, 78-year-old on a roller-coaster ride of helping out. David McCann does have a paying job — he’s the general manager of Creekhouse Industries on Granville Island.But how he finds time to do it amid the numerous and often giddy roller-coaster rides he takes to raise money for The Vancouver […]
Surrey’s Safe School Wraparound program comes full circle for woman who credits former mentor
The Wraparound program is seeking $25,000 in emergency funds from The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School campaign to provide assistance to youth in crisis. At age 12, she ran away from home and headlong into a criminal record that likely awaits anyone that young seeking to survive alone on the streets of Surrey. Why did she run […]
Thousands of children helped by Attendance Matters program
This year, Surrey has asked The Vancouver Sun Children’s Fund board, which administers Adopt-A-School, for $100,000 to provide food for Attendance Matters. Vancouver lawyer Jack Kowarsky’s decade of support for The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School (AAS) campaign on behalf of the Lohn Foundation has fed many thousands of impoverished school children arriving at school hungry. The […]
Funds help immigrant and refugee students learn
Since arriving as a refugee, Divyesh Gadhia has been driven to give back It’s an understatement to say Divyesh Gadhia has been a success in business. As president of Atiga Investments Inc. Gadhia, who lives in Burnaby, is credited with taking the company from near collapse to a $9 billion sale. And if there was […]
Riverdale Elementary’s food program has doubled in two years
There are 48 different languages spoken by children in Surrey’s Riverdale Elementary School. That’s 48 different ways to say “hungry”. When Rachel Ladd became principal of Riverdale Elementary in Surrey two years ago, about 40 children were coming to school looking for breakfast. Now, some days, there are 80. “It jumped up in the spring […]
Wraparound program helps at-risk youth
For any reasonable person what the articulate 17-year-old describes so matter of factly sitting on a park bench in a quiet part of Surrey is a nightmare. She left home at 14 and survived on the streets of Surrey and Vancouver – a child among misfits and predators – until being brought in from the […]
Food insecurity growing for schoolkids, even on Galiano Island
The school needs $4,000 in order to provide some students with a stable source of food and warm clothing GALIANO ISLAND — To describe this island as beautiful borders on the trite. It’s a magnificent 28 kilometres of rocky shores, rainforest, safe harbours and peace and quiet that attracts thousands of tourists and boaters each […]
Needs of hungry kids are daunting and we need your help
Even before this year’s Adopt-a-School program had launched, we’d received a record numbers of applications from schools seeking financial help to alleviate the suffering of these children — arriving at school hungry, or in clothes inappropriate for winter — total $2.9 million. That sum is daunting, but teachers, alarmed at what they are seeing, believe […]