Book a way to preserve and pass on memories of growing up in Churchill

wards their cause. Then, responses came in from The Thompson Labour Committee, who had voted to donate $200 towards the students’ cause, as well as Safeway, who had elected to donate $100. By the end of the month, the students had received over 140 in-school donation items, and had fundraised over $1000.00 for their cause.

One of the first steps in learning about local issues of homelessness was to bring in guest speaker Kristi Gingrich from the Canadian Mental Health Association, which operates The Healing Center. As the students began to learn more about the topic, they started asserting that there had to be something they could do to help the people in our community that are affected by these issues.

The students then decided that they would host a school-wide donation drive to benefit The Healing Center that ran throughout the month of May. It started off with handmade posters that the students placed all around the school and a small group that would make an announcement twice a week during morning announcements.

As donations of canned goods and hygiene items started coming in to the classroom throughout the weeks of May, the students were determined that there was more they could do to help. The students wrote and signed letters to both Safeway and the Thompson Labour Committee asking for donations to their drive in hopes of obtaining more donation items.

While waiting to hear back from the two organizations, an opportunity arose: The Thompson Recycling Center was looking for help to clean their lot of litter, and were willing to pay those who helped. The students voted unanimously to clean up the lot and donate the funds earned to their cause. The students worked hard and managed to clean 41 bags of garbage within 2 hours and earned $200 for their hard work, but they did not stop there!

The class organized and hosted a school-wide bake sale that earned $520 to-

Addictions Foundation of Manitoba northern director Gisele deMeulles has written a book about her experiences growing up, mostly in Churchill.

BY IAN GRAHAM EDITOR@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET

The students then created a detailed list for their teacher to shop for donation items with all of the funds they had raised. The day before the CMHA workers were scheduled to pick up the donation items, the students unbagged all of the donation items to organize them, and were able to cover every desk in their classroom with items, some desks having items stacked in order to fit!

Then, on May 31, 3 CMHA workers arrived to pick up the donations. The students helped the workers load their truck with all of the items they had worked so hard over the past month to procure. The CMHA workers made sure to thank them in person, assuring the students that the items would go very far.

The sheer amount of donation items was amazing, all resulting from the hard work and passion of a class of young people that wanted to do good in their community. We hope they keep sharing their passion and drive to do good things in the future