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 ever an example of a poor refugee child arriving in Canada with nothing but the clothes on his back – then making it big – it’s Gadhia.
He arrived in Canada with his father, mother and sister from Uganda after being expelled from the country by president Idi Amin in 1972.
“I’ve been blessed with luck more than anything else. Coming to Canada was like winning the biggest lottery ticket of my life,” says Gadhia, whose business interests involve on-line gaming.
The route from poverty to where he is today – via a Burnaby-based education – is why he is supporting the Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School (AAS) campaign and its peer-to-peer tutoring program in Surrey’s Queen Elizabeth Secondary school.
The program offers after-school tutoring to students – many of them immigrants or refugees – who need help to improve their grades. It also has the advantage of keeping some at-risk students in school longer and away from possible harmful influences.
They are mentored by other students and the mentors receive a small stipend for being part of the program and AAS is being asked to provide $10,000 to keep the program going. It’s no secret that impoverished students, especially those new to Canada, are vulnerable to approaches from criminals seeking to entice them into such things as distributing drugs or sexual exploitation.
“But for the grace of God I could have been wayward, too,” said Gadhia.
“I had hard working parents (his mother was a housekeeper, his father worked in a warehouse) and being a recent immigrant the opportunities were there to go sideways,” Gadhia said. Gadhia has helped AAS before. While he was chairman of the food delivery company SPUD, Gadhia supplied food to a number of schools who asked AAS for support.
The Surrey program he is supporting is similar to an initiative run by the SFU faculty of education which sends tutors to Lower Mainland elementary and secondary schools which have high populations of immigrant and refugee students.
This program called Friends of Simon is supported by Gadhia’s family and a number of influential foundations and donors. It pays 45 tutors to provide two hours of after school help twice a week to 450 students.
“The multiplier effect is tremendous. It provides financial help for the faculty students who are also in need. And they are helping kids who without these programs would be going home and being lost in many cases, never mind the help they are getting with homework,” said Gadhia.
More than $14 million has been sent from AAS to feed, clothe and provide emergency help to impoverished students since AAS began in 2011.
Last year a record $2.3 million was sent to schools as teachers reported unprecedented numbers of families were struggling to pay rent and buy sufficient food with many parents relying on schools to feed their children.
That was the largest source of non-government funded poverty relief sent to B.C. schools. AAS is being asked for $2.9 million this year.
One hundred percent of donations go to schools. The Vancouver Sun Children’s Fund board does not deduct administration costs from donations.
By Gerry Bellett (gbellett@gmail.com)
