All Stories
Need for food and clothing for schoolkids greater than ever
The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School program has sent $1.4 million to 161 schools this year to help feed and clothe children. The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School program has sent $1.4 million to...
2021/2022
For Surrey principal, school breakfast program is personal
Linda Chau, principal of Surrey’s Mary Jane Shannon Elementary, was two years old in 1980 when her family — boat people who had fled Vietnam — were admitted to Canada...
2021/2022
Project CHEF transfers its resources to Adopt-a-School
The funds were transferred with the stipulation the amount not be disclosed. But it was a substantial donation. It was the most successful culinary program ever offered in the...
2021/2022
Pandemic job losses at home sending kids to school hungry
For the past few years, a make-shift ensemble of parent volunteers, the Salvation Army and the local food bank have been trying to address hunger among some of the children...
2021/2022
Removing stigma key to feeding starving kids
HAGENSBORG — There are three exits to the outside world from this community in the Bella Coola Valley: ferry, light aircraft, or a five-hour trip along an occasionally paved logging...
2021/2022
Surrey WRAP program looks out for at-risk kids
The program is seeking $10,000 from The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School campaign as WRAP doesn’t have discretionary funds to help with emergencies. On Dec. 1, Jon Ross’ plate was full: a...
2021/2022
Teacher feeding hungry kids at her own expense
Bonnie Wendt describes the educational benefits of feeding impoverished and hungry students. For those with sufficient income, tonight is the traditional time for gifting. But for Bonnie Wendt, giving is...
2021/2022
Proper clothing needed to help schoolkids through winter
Students often coming to school hungry and ill-prepared for the winter weather. The impoverished teenagers Randy Horton cares for in the Sunrise Alternative program at Vancouver’s Templeton Secondary could use...
2021/2022
London Drugs delivers Christmas gifts to needy students
This year, a record number of schools from all areas of the province are asking for help to feed and clothe students, with requests to The Vancouver Sun totalling almost...
2021/2022
Vancouver lawyer has sent $450,000 to needy children since 2014
It is unlikely there is anyone with a greater understanding of what it feels like to be hungry to the point of starvation, or to be in need of the...
2021/2022
Wildfires caused additional pressure on hungry kids
The Vernon school district is asking The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School program for $8,500 so it can continue to provide lunch for 206 children daily. For schools in Vernon it was...
2021/2022
Kitsilano program works to lower barriers to access to education
The Vinery Alternative program is asking for $10,500 in funding. Kitsilano, with its narrow, leafy streets of quaint, multi-million-dollar homes, is synonymous with many things, but poverty is not one...
2021/2022
Living up to the challenge of getting youths back into school
We work with some kids who haven’t been to school in three years and who live in total chaos, and we manage to get them graduated and into work programs....
2021/2022
Students facing even greater challenges with homes under water
The children’s fund board, which administers Adopt-A-School, approved a grant of $10,000 to help the school in lieu of donations arriving, plus an extra $2,000 to cover emergencies that have...
2021/2022
School children get help from the young and the young-at-heart
This year, almost double the amount of schools have applied for assistance to feed and clothe children than in the past. On the morning of May 21, 2021, two Vancouver...
2021/2022
Terrace school’s breakfast, lunch program at risk
Terrace Middle School needs $10,000 from The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School campaign to get through the year. Sonja Donnan is seeing an increasing number of students arrive at Skeena Middle School...
2021/2022
Donations from family and friends not enough to keep food program afloat
James Hill Elementary Principal Lynn Fairley is asking The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School campaign for $11,000 to keep her breakfast, lunch and weekend food going. What do you do as a...
2021/2022
Isolated elementary school looking to provide simple snacks for hungry kids
It’s a trek of 90 kilometres down Highway 28 from this central Vancouver Island village to reach any source of fresh produce. Natasha Toth would like to have a hot...
2021/2022
Nanaimo school’s food program will run out of money by Christmas
Knox is asking for $22,000 from The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School campaign to carry on after Christmas as no other source of money has materialized. Holly Knox has 200 or so...
2021/2022
Vancouver Sun charity marks 10th year of helping schoolkids
Before the pandemic of 2019, approximately one in five of this province’s children lived below the poverty line. Almost two years into this crisis there is every sign that poverty...
2021/2022
Shelley Fralic: An advocate for children in need
There are thousands of children in this province who have been fed, clothed and cherished because of the concern and compassion of Shelley Fralic, one of the instigators of the...
2020/2021
Adopt-A-School: $1.2 million in grants given out to schools and organizations
“We have never had so many requests for help before. It is a measure of our readers’ concern and generosity that we have been able to meet these requests.” —...
2020/2021
Adopt-a-School: A special thanks to Vancouver Sun readers
There was the 103-year-old woman who donated to the 2020 Adopt-a-School fundraising campaign not once, but twice. The reason? She knew the children needed help, and wanted to make sure...
2020/2021
Adopt-A-School: Resilience in children should never be confused with tragedy
By recognizing “resilience” as anything other than a tragedy in the life of an impoverished child — and to speak of it as something vaguely admirable — is to ignore...
2020/2021
Adopt-A-School: Hunger, poverty not limited to just inner-city schools
Although the school boundary stretches all the way north to within 40 kilometres of Egmont and south down the bucolic highway to Sechelt, Pender Harbour Elementary-Secondary school has just 75...
2020/2021
Adopt-A-School: 16-year-old homeless girl survives with the help of Safe Schools team
“I became homeless in the summer of 2019. But in my heart I knew I’d never had a home, I never had stability.” — 16-year-old homeless girl The Christmas Eve...
2020/2021
Adopt-a-School: Last push before Christmas
We are pleased — and very grateful — to report that we have raised $902,246 as of 5pm, Wednesday, December 23, 2020. When we kicked off our 10th annual Adopt-a-School...
2020/2021
Adopt-A-School: Britannia Secondary wants to dismantle barriers
“If food is not a factor, and (adequate) clothing is not a problem, students can focus on what matters most which is their education and development.” — Britannia Secondary School...
2020/2021
Donations Reach $750,000 for Adopt-a-School’s 2020 campaign
When we kicked off our 10th annual Adopt-a-School fundraising campaign in November, we were hopeful that Vancouver Sun readers would once again open their hearts — and their wallets —...
2020/2021
Coquitlam’s Encompass Alternative program staff have been giving until it hurts
Principal Lisa Dubé, youth worker Karin Leathwood and others at Coquitlam’s Encompass Alternative program — with their families, friends and acquaintances — know how it feels to give till it...
2020/2021
Adopt-A-School: COVID-19 has made things tough at Nakusp Secondary School
Nakusp Secondary School principal Peter Gajda is asking The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt A School campaign for $5,000 to provide more food and hot meals each week. NAKUSP — It sounds...
2020/2021
Technology opens the school door — both real and virtual — for vulnerable students
The shy young man doesn’t speak or show his face. All I see during a video call is a hand holding up sophisticated sketches that might some day be turned...
2020/2021
Adopt-A-School: London Drugs steps up to assist kids at inner city schools
“Being able to give back to those in need in the communities we serve is paramount to London Drugs. Especially this year, we want to do as much as we...
2020/2021
Adopt-A-School: Improving the life chances for students
NANAIMO — Brett Hancock, principal of the alternative school system in Nanaimo, has learned that for a number of his students facing financial hardships, academic success can be explained by...
2020/2021
Adopt-A-School: A little help with necessities keeps a family going
Surrey school district’s Welcome Centre and the Safe Schools Wraparound program tap Adopt-A-School in effort to keep kids at risk on a healthy path The lot of the Soleil family,...
2020/2021
Adopt-A-School: School uses funds to feed family jobless because of COVID
About a quarter of the kids at Matheson Secondary come from low-income families After all the travails caused by the pandemic — unemployment, hunger and the stresses that come with...
2020/2021
Donors’ amazing generosity hits $500,000 milestone
When we kicked off our 10th annual Adopt-a-School fundraising campaign in November, we were hopeful that Vancouver Sun readers would once again open their hearts — and their wallets —...
2020/2021
Adopt-A-School: Helping kids who may not have food outside of school
Grants target student hunger in Surrey schools For Manjot Badesha, it was only a matter of time before the emotional toll of it all kicked in. The family outreach worker...
2020/2021
Adopt-A-School: A little effort goes a long way at Pacific Custom Brokers
Pacific Custom Brokers has adopted Royal Heights Elementary School in North Surrey, a small school that has many families struggling Three years ago the owner of Pacific Custom Brokers, Glen...
2020/2021
Adopt-A-School: Wellington Elementary is struggling to feed its impoverished students
“Because of COVID we can’t bring volunteers into the building for the food program so we are trying to reinvent it. We are going to have to get prepared food...
2020/2021
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