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| This is what Grade 7 and Grade 3 looks like! |
Back to school time has many parents in a frenzy over buying new clothes, new shoes, and backpacks and lunch boxes that are just perfect for their little student. Imagine if you couldn’t afford to provide your child with the necessities they need to go back to school this September.
I’ve found these 6 great ways to help families at back to school time! Get your family involved in giving back to help kids start off the school year right!
1. Did you know that the majority of low-income families do not have a single book for their children? First Book Canada provides new books to children in need. For only $10, you can provide 4 books for a child to help them succeed in school. To date, First Book has distributed more than 100 million books and educational resources to programs and schools serving children from low-income families throughout the United States and Canada.
2. Not only do children need to feed their minds, but also their bodies. Blessings in a Backpack was founded by Hillary Duff and is designed to support schoolchildren who simply do not have enough to eat on weekends. The program works like this: kids take home a backpack filled with food every Friday and return the backpack empty on Monday, ready to start their week. For $100, you can feed a family each weekend of the school year!
3. Adopting a school outside of Canada can bring a sense of global responsibility and help teach your children to look beyond our borders. Sandals Foundation in Jamaica and Turks and Caicos is an amazing organization that helps to ensure that as many children, youth and adults as possible have the educational opportunities they need to reach their full potential. Programs include community scholarships, adopting schools, book drives and literacy programs, and support of new libraries and computer facilities. 100% of your donation goes to the specific projects.
4. When shopping for back to school, think about buying some extras for students needing school supplies and backpacks. You can usually make your donation at any Salvation Army, YMCA or other local charity program, most of whom run school supply drives for local families in need of help.
5. The most important meal of the day is not always a choice for families in need. Thankfully, there are programs across Canada helping kids get a healthy breakfast before school. Donating is easy at Breakfast for Learning! You can feed a class, provide milk or snacks and for $25 you can provide fruit like bananas to help kids in need. In the last school years, Breakfast for Learning funded 4,431 breakfast, lunch and snack programs serving over 2,400 schools, supporting more than 430,000 children and youth and providing over 67 million nourishing meals and snacks.
6. Give back to SickKids so that kids in the hospital can continue to have access to great books and arts and crafts while they are healing. Honour your own healthy kids, by donating to the upcoming Walk for SickKids to keep kids healthy and in school for many more years to come. We’d love your support for Zack’s Dream Team as we walk 20km this September!
