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 […]
OpenRoad Auto Group helps children in its communities with Adopt-a-School donation
It was a combination of wanting to give back to the community and hearing stories of children in need that touched the charitable heart of the OpenRoad organization. It began with a company-wide fund-raising golf tournament several years ago, when the OpenRoad Auto Group — comprising18 car dealerships representing 20 automobile brands in B.C. — […]
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.” […]
Surrey: Refugee families receive food and vital assistance
For refugee families it’s often the local school that holds them together until they find their balance. And for Obeid Abouzeid, his wife Nazadar and their five children – all boys – their place of refuge is Lena Shaw Elementary on 100A Avenue in Whalley. This Surrey school is home to 42 Arabic-speaking children, including […]
Tutors keep it real, pay it forward at QE in Whalley
The world outside can be harsh and dangerous for teenagers in Whalley but it’s countered wonderfully by the warmth and caring found in the library of Queen Elizabeth Secondary on peer-to-peer tutoring nights. Twice a week after school as many as 16 tutors set up shop in the library like vendors in a market, each with a card on […]
Tupper Alternative Program
There’s nothing extravagant about what the alternative school program at Vancouver’s Sir Charles Tupper Secondary needs from the community. Food, clothing and bus tickets. Some students don’t have enough to eat at home, some don’t have coats just hoodies for all weathers, and some skip school because it’s too far to walk or skateboard in […]
Sidoo family steps up for Maple Ridge Secondary
When Jordan Sidoo was 14 years old he would sell pen and pencil sets to his friends to raise money for The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School campaign. Seven years later he’s a director of the Sidoo family’s charitable foundation with his brother Dylan, 24. And on Wednesday the brothers wrote a $15,000 cheque to AAS to be used to […]
Donations have dried up at Maple Ridge Secondary
Canada is proud of being a classless society, we give out a few honours — Order of Canada, Order of British Columbia — but we don’t do bowing and scraping or raising people above others with titles: sir this, lord that, lady so-and-so. However, if you look at how we treat our poor — and […]
Blundell Seafoods helping teens in need with jobs, scholarships
Last December, Jeremy Law, the general manager of Blundell Seafoods in Richmond, not only sent cases of canned tuna to schools where hunger was prevalent, but followed up with an offer to employ older students struggling with poverty. “It was a brilliant offer,” said Sarah McKay, a member of Surrey’s Safe Schools Team, who gladly accepted it. The team […]