E-talk TV celebrity Tanya Kim was featured in Gemini-nominated Star Portraits television series talking about her work with various charitable organizations, including Blessings in a Backpack. See: http://www.bravo.ca/television/star-portraits/celebrities.asp
The UofT Bookstore in downtown Toronto partnered with Blessings in a Backpack on an awareness campaign last fall to encourage the donation of used backpacks. Enough backpacks were gathered to support a new Blessings school. Thank you UofT Bookstore! Stay tuned for more promotions and exciting events in 2011.
Angela McLean, a budding journalist and seventh-grade student in Toronto, has helped raise 188 backpacks for Blessings in a Backpack through several methods. She raised 100 at an event at her local mall, 54 from a drive she set up at her school, 5 by donating them herself, and 29 from a young Canadian actor named Austin MacDonald.
Angela, who wrote her first article for her local paper at age 8, is a talented and driven young lady. She became familiar with Blessings in a Backpack after seeing Hilary Duff and Stan Curtis speak at press conference opening Canada’s first Blessing in a Backpack program in 2009. Angela was so impressed by Hilary and her passion to help less fortunate children, she made it her mission to help. After the press conference, Angela attended a charity dinner where she heard Hilary speak of the need for more backpacks. Inspired, Angela quickly went to work organizing a backpack drive at her school.
Angela, with her mom at her side, approached her school’s principal and vice-principal who agreed to a September 2009 Backpack Raiser. She busily spread the word about the backpack drive by making posters and announcements, as well as providing details in the school newsletter. She was even able to leverage her media contacts to encourage donations.
We thank Angela for her hard work and dedication in supporting the Blessings in a Backpack program and encourage others to create their own way to raise backpacks!
Mississauga actor Austin MacDonald carries the weight of a unique backpack program on his shoulders.
The young actor was at the 14th annual Clarkson Village Halloween Fun Fest yesterday urging visitors to donate backpacks to the Blessings in a Backpack (BIB)program.
MacDonald, who has appeared in films such as Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, Roxy Hunter and Horrific Halloween, has teamed up with THE Magazine’s Angela MacLean to collect new or gently used backpacks in support of the internationally successful Blessings in a Backpack(BIB) program.
Mississauga actor Austin MacDonald carries the weight of a unique backpack program on his shoulders.
The young actor was at the 14th annual Clarkson Village Halloween Fun Fest yesterday urging visitors to donate backpacks to the Blessings in a Backpack (BIB)program.
MacDonald, who has appeared in films such as Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, Roxy Hunter and Horrific Halloween, has teamed up with THE Magazine’s Angela MacLean to collect new or gently used backpacks in support of the internationally successful Blessings in a Backpack(BIB) program.
Ogilvy Renault’s in-house band, DisORderly Conduct, will join corporate banks from the Royal Bank of Canada (The Performing Assets) and Telus (incident 11) in an annual battle of the bands on May 5 at the Tattoo Rock Parlor in Toronto. Proceeds will go to Blessings in a Backpack, Feeding the Future of Canada. The charity feeds students who must rely on government funded and reduced meal programs, but may not have enough to eat on weekends. Tanya Kim of etalk will host.
Hilary Duff, the pop star, was in Toronto yesterday to promote a program to feed high school students. But before we get to that, let us go to Emery Collegiate Institute, on Weston Road at Finch Avenue West, which began its own program in October to feed 1,050 students a mid-morning meal every school day.
As it turns out, what students really crave are carrots.
“They fight for it,” says Grade 10 student Shahla Hassan, 16, who is in Grade 10. “They only bring two bags of carrots and they fight for it.”
Emery Collegiate is a big old high school on a hill. It looks ordinary enough; students rose yesterday to sing O Canada, and the vice-principal, speaking over the P. A., encouraged them to watch the Martin Grove vs. Emery basketball game at 7 p. m. on Rogers cable. According to school board studies, 68% of students here don’t eat breakfast, and 54% don’t eat lunch. They have among the highest rate of type 2 diabetes in Canada.
Hilary Duff, the pop star, was in Toronto yesterday to promote a program to feed high school students. But before we get to that, let us go to Emery Collegiate Institute, on Weston Road at Finch Avenue West, which began its own program in October to feed 1,050 students a mid-morning meal every school day.
As it turns out, what students really crave are carrots.
“They fight for it,” says Grade 10 student Shahla Hassan, 16, who is in Grade 10. “They only bring two bags of carrots and they fight for it.”
Emery Collegiate is a big old high school on a hill. It looks ordinary enough; students rose yesterday to sing O Canada, and the vice-principal, speaking over the P.A., encouraged them to watch the Martin Grove vs. Emery basketball game at 7 p.m. on Rogers cable.
According to school board studies, 68% of students here don’t eat breakfast, and 54% don’t eat lunch. They have among the highest rate of type 2 diabetes in Canada.
Last fall, the Toronto District School Board began feeding a meal at three high schools and four middle schools in the Jane/Finch area, including this one, at a cost of $1.1-million per year. Read more.
Hillary Duff, the pop singer and movie star, spent two hours today at a small high school called Contact which is tucked in behind the Mount Sinai Hospital, on St. Patrick Street south of Dundas Street West. She is in town promoting a charity, Blessings in a Backpack. For the past two months, Contact High School, part of the Toronto District School Board, has sent each of its 220 students home with a colourful backpack stuffed with granola bars, Alphaghetti, baked beans, carrot cake, plus apples, oranges and pears.
From the outset, it’s hard to connect Hilary Duff with Toronto’s hungry students. But, here she is, poring her little heart out, pounding out the message that children with empty bellies, regardless of geography, is a cause worth fighting.
Duff was in town – holding court at Contact Alternative School – in promotion for Blessings in a Backpack, a feeding program, organized by Stan Curtis (also creator of U.S.A. Harvest), that has already supplied food for over 10 000 children across North America. The Toronto District School Board started feeding a meal at three high schools and four intermediate schools in the Jane and Finch area, including this one, at a cost of $1.1-million per year. Every Friday, donated backpacks are filled with food for underprivileged kids. The program grants basic products like “Alphagetties”, granola bars, and baked beans to youth (we’re talking young ones all the way to Grade 12 students), who take the filled backpacks “home” and have a solid six meals worth of food. All this is in order to have students return to school nourished, and on the whole, in better spirits.
