Students Drive Breakfast Idea: Unique program at Van Tech feeds upwards of 100 kids each day
Each morning a small, dedicated group of students arrive at Vancouver Tech on East Broadway at least 1½ hours before classes begin. They aren’t there doing anything to advance their own academic performance – it’s more basic than that. Many kids, it seems, are arriving at school hungry every morning – due to a variety […]
Adopt-A-School: Vancouver Sun Children’s fund distributed $604,000 in emergency funds last year
Today marks the start of the seventh annual Adopt-A-School campaign during which we are again appealing to readers to consider the plight of children coming to school unfed, improperly dressed and suffering the psychological effects of living in poverty. We are not talking about a few children. We are talking about thousands. And they are […]
Thousands of students helped by Vancouver Sun Adopt-a-School readers and supporters
The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School program has so far this year sent more than $623,000 to 85 schools across the province to feed hungry children and ensure they are properly clothed. Since it began in 2011 the program has raised close to $4 million to help teachers and principals struggling — with few resources — to […]
Telus donation funds technology for Vancouver special needs students
More than 1,500 special needs students in Vancouver will now have access to the latest learning technology, thanks to a donation from Telus and a grant from the Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School (AAS) campaign. Currently there is no money available to provide this technology — a combination of iPads, Apple TV and special apps and programs […]
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. […]