Adopt-a-School and COVID-19
With schools closed needy children are missing out on breakfast and lunch There isn’t an institution in the world — from the largest and most powerful to the smallest — left unshaken by the hammer blows of COVID-19. The Vancouver Sun Children’s Fund Board, with its six directors, qualifies as one of the smallest. Regardless […]
Adopt-a-School: There is a dire need for people to be helped
Raymond Louie may have risen from the mailroom to the boardroom in the last 30 years — dumping his overalls for a suit and tie — but he has kept his same social conscience. In his early working life, Louie was bundling newspapers in the noisy, viewless basement of the old Pacific Press building on […]
Adopt-A-School: Nanaimo-Ladysmith alternative education program gets a helping hand
Entrepreneur Barj Dhahan has a long history of helping students Vancouver businessman Barj Dhahan was moved when he recently read a Nanaimo principal’s comment that he regarded every child in his school district as his own. “What he was saying touched me. He is, of course, right. All the kids in this province are our […]
Adopt-A-School: Donations support Indigenous learning at Vancouver school
To be a non-Aboriginal principal of Vancouver’s only Indigenous-focus school — χpey̓ Elementary on Hastings Street near Victoria — Rose McKenzie is having to delve deep into her almost four decades of teaching wisdom. “This is a complex school,” she says leaving it at that. “Every child needs a chance to learn. But we have […]
Adopt-A-School: Surrey’s Wraparound program changes lives
“If it wasn’t for (Safe Schools) I feel like I’d still be getting into trouble. They have helped me calm down. I was getting into too many fights." — An at-risk youth who has been helped by the funds made available through the Adopt-A-School program. He looks like he’s just taking a break from the […]
Adopt-A-School: Thank you for the support and happy holidays
Christmas Eve is the most sentimental day of the year and the one that carries the most emotional freight. For months TV and radio have been consumed with convincing us what we should put under the tree tonight, the crescendo arriving this week. It is, of course, a symphony being played to an audience well-off […]
Adopt-A-School: Small corner of closed Nanaimo school is thriving, but students need a hand
NANAIMO — Google Woodlands Secondary School and the search engine will come up with the message ‘ Permanently closed’ which is only partially correct. Most of this old, worn out, sprawling high school on Strathmore Street is boarded up — the windows nailed over with sheets of plywood, all the doors locked and bolted since […]
Adopt-A-School: Health and well-being are a priority at B.C.’s first UNESCO school
CRESTON — The winters here are harsh, so imagine how distraught Laury Carriere and her colleagues at Canyon-Lister Elementary are upon seeing children arrive at school — in temperatures way below zero — wearing summer clothes. “We just can’t stand it, seeing little kids in a thin hoodies with wet feet and thin shoes walking […]
Adopt-A-School: Holocaust survivor knew hunger, now supports needy kids
Vancouver lawyer Jack Kowarsky’s $50,000 donation to program that feeds hungry students ‘important for a child’s development’ It’s a story, fable and prophecy all wrapped up in 40 words, and the writing on the wall is clear: If poverty is allowed to interfere in a child’s education, society eventually suffers. “Mary’s family can’t afford a […]
Adopt-a-School: London Drugs committed to helping kids through poverty
Parked 20 metres away was a truck containing hundreds of gifts from London Drugs, and a small crowd of children was gathered in the hallway around teacher Rajbir Sohal, waiting to help unload it. She was about to open the school doors and let them out when she remembered how cold it was. “Put your […]