Local students are looking to bring equality to our community when it comes to food.
Kapuskasing District High School students have set their sights on eliminating hunger from their local community.
Guidance Councillor and Special Education Teacher Yvonne Odai says KDHS students have come together to create a Community Aid Reach for Equity, or CARE group, which stems from the District School Board Ontario North East pillars of Equity, Culture and Innovation.
Odai says students have planned a famine to be held in late May as their year-end project. This will be done in order to raise awareness to their goal, but to help also raise funds for their own school as well as community food bank.
KDSH student Alex Passera explained that the purpose of the group is to help remove barriers for all students.
“It’s about equity, so we want everybody to have what they need, so like I said every learner to achieve personal excellence, so if somebody is hungry they can’t really focus on school if they do not have breakfast in the morning, right? So, having food is an essential part of learning.”
It is $20 to sleep at the school overnight, but efforts to raise funds are going beyond the classroom as students are going door-to-door to ask the community for help as well.
Students say during the day of the famine, they will have a boatload of activities to keep the students busy throughout the evening while they fast.
Indigenous Student Advisor Holly Lamontagne says the point of the project is to make students aware of the issues ongoing.
“We just believe that there’s alot of people in our community that don’t have alot to eat during the day so I think were doing the famine to show the students and to show our community, while we are also raising money for this good cause.”
Odai says Mrs. Crump deserves a lot of credit for having started this initiative three to four years ago, and simply put, she wants to continue to build off of the groundwork she laid out and the vision that she put in place by branching off of that.
She says the end goal for their students, make sure all their peers within KDHS are working on full stomachs.
“Our goal is just to have enough for every student in the school. I don’t believe that if you intend getting students to achieve or helping students to achieve excellence, that they could think about their personal goals when they are hungry.”
The famine takes place Thursday, May 30th at KDHS and breakfast will be provided for you in the morning.
