When I first heard about the Youth Philanthropy Initiative, I must admit that I thought it would just be some more work that I simply would not have enough time for. I was not really looking forward to it. However, I soon realized that this was an extremely rewarding experience in which I had the opportunity to learn about small charities in Montreal.
We first decided on the Native Women’s Shelter as our charity because we were very impressed with the way the charity helped a small and often overlooked minority. We felt like they could seriously benefit from the grand prize of $5,000. We met with some of the workers at the shelter and even one of the women benefitting from their services. She said that the shelter had changed her life when she managed to get away from her old existence and start anew. She had been with, as she put it, a “bad man” and had been using many drugs. When we were introduced to her, she had been clean for eight months and was looking to move out on her own in the near future. This woman greatly inspired us when it came time to create our presentation.
Though in the end we came second in the YPI competition, we knew we still wanted to help the shelter in some way. Therefore, we organized a bake sale in which we enlisted the help of many people in our grade and raised $400 in support of the organization. There was also a free dress day at school in which everyone brought in one item of clothing. The school did not know what to do with them, so we offered to take all the garments off their hands and bring them to the shelter. The workers at the shelter were overjoyed and we felt like, however small, we had made a difference. Read about LCC in the NWS newsletter.
—Liane Bernstein ’09
(More about Student Opportunities and Skills)
On Saturday, September 9, my friends and I spent the morning at the 12th Annual Fuller Landau CanSupport des Cedres Dragon Boat Race. We got there bright and early to prepare for our first race at 8:45 am which was against three other boats, one being another group of grade 10 LCC students! Unfortunately, we came in last place and the other LCC team came in 3rd. We didn’t let that get us down and immediately started strategizing for our second race in which we came in 3rd place!