{"id":12881,"date":"2015-12-16T14:37:28","date_gmt":"2015-12-16T19:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=12881"},"modified":"2015-12-16T14:37:28","modified_gmt":"2015-12-16T19:37:28","slug":"12-days-of-light-sparks-fire-of-giving-in-local-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/12-days-of-light-sparks-fire-of-giving-in-local-students\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Days of Light sparks fire of giving in local students"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was the culmination of their school\u2019s 12 Days of Light, but St. Max students didn\u2019t let rain get in the way of lighting sparks of hope on the streets of Toronto. <\/p>\n

Grade 12 students, along with their teachers, loaded up two busloads of collected clothes, gift cards, and other items to deliver to Toronto-based shelters and community organizations on Monday afternoon, heading out for an evening of delivering their precious cargo as well as distributing sandwiches, baked goods, and scarves hand-crafted by the school\u2019s fashion department to people in need they encountered along the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re all overwhelmed and shocked at how well everyone has done,\u201d said Amelia Card as they got ready to pack the buses. \u201cWe didn\u2019t expect this outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Added Chawa Mhango: \u201cIt shows how much students here really care about the issue and they want to make a difference. It really shows.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it wasn\u2019t due to lack of effort. Divvying out tasks, Amelia was just one student in charge of getting the word out through social media challenges, while Chawa was tasked with delivering the message during morning announcements and during a recent school-wide mass. Carlea Blight was in charge of decorations \u2013 and if you think decorations was simply throwing up a bunch of balloons, think again. It was making sure the message was visible for all to see.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to raise awareness that there is poverty here in Canada, not just in other parts of the world,\u201d said Carlea. \u201cThis [program] has opened our eyes to people in the world around us and how we can help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the teachers spearheading the 12 Days of Light campaign are Rob McGarrigle and Lesley Williams.<\/p>\n

Early in the year, they decided on a program to allow students to learn about very real issues in the world \u2013 local issues including youth poverty and wider issues including the Syrian Refugee Crisis \u2013 and make a difference within their own community.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraditionally, our school has contributed to various charities around Christmastime, but this time we took it a step further by having the students not only contribute to good causes but study about the issues themselves,\u201d said Mr. McGarrigle.<\/p>\n

His religion class focused on the issue of youth homelessness, while Ms. Williams\u2019 class examined issues related to poverty. Students broke into groups to research issues themselves and find out more about agencies working to combat these problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the teacher of the class, I was expecting them to have the basics, but they really went over the top,\u201d he said. \u201cThey were able to learn about the issues, connect with them, and they were able to come up with ways to make this drive successful. This is a tradition they do every year, but I don\u2019t think they have had this much contributed before. This has been really successful!\u201d<\/p>\n

Added Ms. Williams: We wanted them to take away a real-life experience and an understanding of the social justice issues that are in our society, especially poverty and homelessness, to understand that it is there in our own back yards and to know how fortunate they are as students who come to a wonderful school, have clothing on their backs and have all the technology and resources available to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they were astonished by the clothes they have actually collected. They weren\u2019t anticipating such a success at the end of it, but they are very proud of themselves and getting excited to get out there. I don\u2019t think they have processed that they actually have to lug all this stuff down into the city and the streets, but they are definitely looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was the culmination of their school\u2019s 12 Days of Light, but St. Max students didn\u2019t let rain get in the way of lighting sparks of hope on the streets of Toronto. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3lL","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-15 12:15:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/2015-12-17-07.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}