Hoping to bring a helping hand to Strathmore High
Shannon LeClair
Times Reporter
Strathmore High School (SHS) is seeking ways to ensure its students are supported in various ways, including helping with field trips and perhaps offering a breakfast and/or lunch program at the school. But finding the funding needed to implement various programs can be a problem.
Recently, the school submitted an application to the large funding category of the AVIVA Community Fund competition, an annual competition “that is changing Canadian communities by bringing great ideas to life,” according to Aviva Insurance, the company responsible for the competition.
SHS’s entry into the competition, entitled Helping Hands, is designed as a bursary type program that will help students in need. According to SHS principal Gary Reagan, SHS staff has always tried to find ways to help kids whose parents cannot afford some of the basic things, such as money for fields trips and sports and so on.
“It would be a bursary program to support kids at the school who need help with curricular field trips, or a breakfast/lunch program or kids who need support outside the school as well, on a temporary basis,” he said. “We know our student population well enough that there’s a significant portion that I think would access and benefit from some bursary support.”
Reagan said that in addition, a co-curricular program would allow kids to engage in different relationships that are supportive and fun, building character, self esteem and connections.
“Participation in co-curricular programs is a tremendous way for kids to build connections with others kids, because otherwise their connections are limited to the friends that they have or choose to have, and their classmates,” he noted.
“It’s a wonderful way for kids to grow as individuals. I know what it can do for kids, and if the kids are not able to participate, they’re missing out on so much.”
The school first found out about the AVIVA Community Fund competition through Heather Robertson at Action Insurance Group. The brokerage is supportive of SHS’s Helping Hands idea, and wants to help spread awareness.
“It’s all about giving back to the community and finding something that is near and dear to our hearts, and kids are a big deal to us,” said Janelle Pettifer, a personal account manager with Action Insurance Group.
Each idea submitted in the AVIVA Community Fund competition moves forward through a voting process. There are three chances to have one of the top 30 ideas and move to the next round of voting.
“If we can be one of the top 10 ideas in the large funding group, then we move on to the semi-finals. If not, we still have round three to try again. If we get into the semi-finals, then again it is voting. After that it is judging,” said Pettifer.
“It really is simple, you register once. You can go onto Facebook and all you have to do is click ‘vote now’, it really is that simple; you can vote once a day.”
She said it is easy as a society to believe that 90 per cent of kids are having breakfast and lunch, but “when you take the blinders off you realize a high percentage of them are not.”
For more information about SHS’s entry into the competition, and to vote, visit http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf17039.