{"id":16607,"date":"2017-02-22T17:23:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T22:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=16607"},"modified":"2017-02-22T17:23:00","modified_gmt":"2017-02-22T22:23:00","slug":"students-help-kids-facing-challenges-feed-their-creative-souls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/students-help-kids-facing-challenges-feed-their-creative-souls\/","title":{"rendered":"Students help kids facing challenges feed their creative souls"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Carter Eby knows his late sister Haddan is beaming with gratitude.
\nAs a Grade 10 student a couple of years ago in Pickering College\u2019s Global Leadership Program, he initially shied away from nominating the Haddan Eby Endowment Fund for a student-led fundraising initiative. He didn\u2019t feel putting forward the charity set up in his sister\u2019s name to benefit kids battling childhood cancer was appropriate at that time, says his mother, Kim.
\nThis year, however, Pickering\u2019s Grade 10 students took up the challenge, securing $2,000 for the fund, which benefits Camp Oochigeas, a camp tailored for kids facing battles similar to Haddan.
\n\u201cI feel very proud as a brother for Haddan because I know this is something she would feel grateful for,\u201d says Carter. \u201cShe would be very proud of all of us right now, being able to keep her legacy going at Camp Ooch, and in our community as well.\u201d
\nOver the course of each year, Pickering College staff are able to opt into a program deducting each paycheque by an amount of their choosing. By term\u2019s end, the pooled money goes toward a particular cause. Staff this year decided to put their money behind the students and, at the same time, enable them to learn more about charities and non-profits.
\nEnter the Pickering College Philanthropy Challenge.
\n\u201cStudents were in groups of three and they were all competing for this prize money,\u201d explains student Lexi Giorgi. \u201cFirst place got $2,000, second place got $500, and the third got $250. We all chose an organization we thought would be a great recipient for this money and when we did our research and pitched why our organization would be in need of money, the Haddan Eby Foundation and Camp Ooch won the pitch.\u201d
\nThe deeper the students delved into the work of the Haddan Eby Endowment Fund and Camp Ooch, the deeper they knew it was the cause they had to boost.
\nTheir emotion for the cause carried over into their work, they say, particularly as hits so close to home for the Pickering College community.
\n\u201cIt is something really close to home with having Carter here at the school and having the family part of the school,\u201d says student Samuel Correa. \u201cIt was eye-opening for me.\u201d
\nOne particular eye-opener for the students, they agree, is the statistic of how many kids are diagnosed with childhood cancer each day. By the time fellow student Harper James was through the middle of her part of the presentation, they illustrated 43 kids faced a diagnosis in just that short window.
\n\u201cChoosing Camp Ooch and the Haddan Eby Foundation really inspired us to volunteer later on and put out the word that, if we know someone, Camp Ooch is there for them and they can possibly go there or even volunteer,\u201d says Harper. \u201cIt is just something special for the kids to give them a place where they feel at home.\u201d
\nThis was a verdict teacher Julia Hunt says makes exercises like these all worthwhile.
\n\u201cOne of the questions students were really attentive to was how to get involved and volunteer,\u201d says Ms. Hunt. \u201cI think the presentation was very moving for the Grade 10 class and you can see a lot of them are trying to figure out how that might fit into their life and how they can have a chance to volunteer.\u201d
\nReceiving the $2,000 cheque alongside Camp Ooch\u2019s Michelle Afinec was Haddan and Carter\u2019s mother, Kim Eby. She said she was grateful that students had the opportunity to learn more about how childhood cancer affects kids and the services places like Camp Ooch can provide. In this case, the camp has earmarked the money to aid in the construction of a new arts and crafts facility in a future camp season.
\n\u201cIt was interesting because when Carter went through [the Global Leadership Program in Grade 10] he didn\u2019t feel it was appropriate [to put the fund forward] at that time, so I was really quite honoured they chose it because it wasn\u2019t something I was even thinking about,\u201d says Kim. \u201cWhen Carter came home and told me, I thought it was lovely because Haddan would be their classmate at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carter Eby knows his late sister Haddan is beaming with gratitude.
\nAs a Grade 10 student a couple of years ago in Pickering College\u2019s Global Leadership Program, he initially shied away from nominating the Haddan Eby Endowment Fund for a student-led fundraising initiative. He didn\u2019t feel putting forward the charity set up in his sister\u2019s name to benefit kids battling childhood cancer was appropriate at that time, says his mother, Kim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16590,"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_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-16607","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\/2017\/02\/2017-02-23-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4jR","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-25 05:59:59","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\/16607","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=16607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}