All Stories
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...
2017/2018
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...
2017/2018
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...
2017/2018
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...
2017/2018
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...
2017/2018
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...
2017/2018
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...
2017/2018
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...
2017/2018
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...
2017/2018
London Drugs brightens students’ Christmas with gifts and toys
Principal Lisa Jamieson didn’t hide her delight when the London Drugs truck pulled up outside Old Yale Road Elementary delivering bags of toys and gifts. “We are such a needy...
2017/2018
Pre-kindergarten classes help kids get school-ready; StrongStart will also expose some parents to social, health programs
When Henry Peters arrived this year as principal of South Vancouver’s John Henderson Elementary, one thing he noticed was that some children entering kindergarten weren’t as prepared for school life as...
2017/2018
Helping Children Overcome Trauma Through Art
“We’ve all been broken before, but we heal. We do have the darkness still, but we have to learn to live without the darkness.“ A HANDWRITTEN SIGN PINNED TO THE WALL IN GUILDFORD...
2017/2018
Breakfast food for students a growing need
Robin Pilchak knows what it’s like being a single mother with young children and how hard it is to feed them when money is tight. “I’m a single mom with...
2017/2018
Burnaby Central’s music therapy program at risk of playing last note
It’s a singalong jam session and dancing lesson, and for the seven special-needs students in Burnaby Central Secondary, the hour with music therapist Don Hardy is pure joy. “For these...
2017/2018
Chronic absenteeism falls after launch of Surrey’s Attendance Matters
Supported by The Vancouver Sun Children’s Fund Adopt-a-School initiative since 2011, Attendance Mattershas resulted in a substantial drop in absenteeism among children from kindergarten to Grade 3, according to statistics collected...
2017/2018
Attendance Matters program serves breakfast to get kids to come to school
Principal Angelo Morelli describes his North Surrey school as both fortress and sanctuary for the 606 children assigned to his care. The fortress consists of the locked exterior doors, the...
2017/2018
KidSafe a welcome spot when school’s out; At-risk children will have a place to go with program helped by reader donations
Almost 25 years ago a Vancouver boy was seriously assaulted during school holidays – an attack that would not have happened had he had a safe place to go instead of just wandering the...
2017/2018
Company makes a difference for kids in ‘profound poverty’; Raven Hydronic Supply’s gift of $5,000 a year meets basic needs like food, clothes
Four years ago staff in a Surrey heating supply company were disturbed at discovering the extent at which impoverished students in their neighbourhood were suffering. “We were reading The Vancouver...
2017/2018
‘I Had Nothing For The Other Kids Who Were Hungry’; School near Ladysmith struggling to feed students
It’s easily the worst moment of the day when a hungry child comes to her for food and there is nothing to give. “It’s horrible,” says Christine De Vries, the secretary of Ecole...
2017/2018
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...
2017/2018
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...
2017/2018
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....
2016/2017
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...
2016/2017
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...
2016/2017
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...
2016/2017
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...
2016/2017
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...
2016/2017
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...
2016/2017
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...
2016/2017
100 cases of donated tuna goes far to fight hunger; Five schools will share generous donation from Blundell Seafoods
Three Vancouver and two Surrey schools will share 100 cases of tuna donated by Richmond’s Blundell Seafoods for families living in poverty as part of the company’s donation to The...
2016/2017
Helping bridge weekend hunger gap; Money will create cooking program, emergency fund to buy clothes, shoes
The poor could give seminars on the gaps in their lives. The gaps without food, without money, without bare necessities – if they have plenty of anything, it’s gaps. So...
2016/2017
School wants to help feed poor children again; Institution in gentrifying area lost special funding amid housing boom
Until recently Mount Pleasant Elementary school was designated inner-city and eligible for special funding from the Vancouver School Board to help its poorest of families. But that’s finished. It had...
2016/2017
Single working parents get welcome lift: After-school programs provide invaluable help
It’s a story that crops up in almost every school – the single mother working morning, noon and night for minimum wage and still unable to feed her children properly....
2016/2017
For some children, school is as close to family as they will get
It takes only a few paragraphs written by the principal of one learning centre to another to lay bare the tragedy of a young life. The details are so stark,...
2016/2017
Chilliwack’s Watson Elementary needs help feeding 50 hungry kids a day
For Elaine Arsenault the beautiful moments at school far outweigh the ugly. “I’ve been head-butted, spat upon, I’ve been called a crackhead and worse,” said the child and youth care...
2016/2017
Canada lags behind in its care for impoverished children
Ensuring that children thrive is the ultimate motherhood issue, so unsurprisingly there is overwhelming public support for it. But that support has never been translated into action in Canada. Sixteen...
2016/2017
Children will go hungry in Surrey school if breakfast program is lost
Surrey principal Angelo Morelli says it would be a tragedy if his school, K.B. Woodward Elementary in Whalley, ever lost its breakfast program which feeds up to 60 hungry children...
2016/2017
Program at Sir Charles Tupper secondary school helps teen parents graduate
Seventeen-year-old Rena Nadeau admitted there was a time she considered dropping out of school. Eighteen months ago, she was pregnant and it looked like her school days were over. “I...
2016/2017
One in five children in B.C. live in poverty
One in five B.C. children live in poverty, a rate that is unchanged from 20 years ago, First Call’s 2016 B.C. Child Poverty Report Card shows. That’s 163,000 kids living in...
2016/2017
Families at Edmonds Community School struggle to buy food and pay rising rents
Social assistance rates have been frozen for almost a decade in B.C. while a white-hot real estate market has pushed rents through the roof. Which is why Sean Gaster, principal...
2016/2017
Make a difference. Help children in your community!
Donate Now