{"id":16139,"date":"2016-12-21T17:35:30","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T22:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=16139"},"modified":"2016-12-21T17:35:30","modified_gmt":"2016-12-21T22:35:30","slug":"sac-charity-drive-brings-cheer-to-youth-in-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/sac-charity-drive-brings-cheer-to-youth-in-need\/","title":{"rendered":"SAC charity drive brings cheer to youth in need"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jake Courtepatte<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not all of Santa\u2019s elves are at the North Pole: it seems some are at St. Andrew\u2019s College.<\/p>\n

SAC students and staff wrapped up their annual \u201cHoliday Hero\u201d drive last week, an initiative that has provided a Christmas to youth in the community who would otherwise go without one.<\/p>\n

Working with the Children\u2019s Aid Society for the last decade, Holiday Hero sponsors 125 youth between the ages of 16 and 21, many of whom are living with no family to rely on, or proper homes for the holidays.<\/p>\n

With few goods of their own, many of the youth ask for simply the basic goods that most take for granted, like toiletries, winter clothing, and gift cards to buy food.<\/p>\n

\u201cYouth buying for youth definitely helped raise awareness and understanding of those who have less,\u201d said Melissa Tackaberry, Holiday Hero Coordinator.
\nThe Holiday Hero program is a school-wide initiative, with the entire staff and student body contributing, totaling around 700 helping hands. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur students read through the profiles of the 125 Youth in Care and choose one or two youth that they would like to support,\u201d said Tackaberry. \u201cThey then shop for the youth and return the gifts to SAC to be wrapped.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe faculty and staff help support the students through the process as well as \u2018adopting\u2019 youth of their own to help support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then came the difficult task of wrapping the gifts. Tackaberry said more students helped wrapped this season than ever before, totaling about 25 students, as well as faculty and staff.<\/p>\n

With an estimate topping a staggering $1.25 million in donations raised over ten years in the program, SAC has helped out over 1,500 families and youth. Tackaberry estimates this year\u2019s haul to be around $125,000 worth of items and gift cards alone.<\/p>\n

Looking to the future, however, Tackaberry said the program will be looking next year to partner with any business connections the students may have through their families, and bring the initiative to the next level.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would love to have connections with any businesses that produce items that youth could use [who] live on their own,\u201d said Tackaberry. \u201cThis includes toiletries, clothing such as pyjamas, socks, sweaters\u2026kitchen items such as dishes, microwaves, cutlery\u2026linens such as towels, and bedding…as well as items youth would need to go to post-secondary school such as laptops and school supplies.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jake Courtepatte Not all of Santa\u2019s elves are at the North Pole: it seems some are at St. Andrew\u2019s College. SAC students and staff wrapped up their annual \u201cHoliday Hero\u201d drive last week, an initiative that has provided a Christmas to youth in the community who would otherwise go without one. Working with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/2016-12-22-12.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4cj","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 22:17:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16139","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=16139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}