Recognizing poverty in our city - how can we help?

We study need in our world in grade 6 and we spend some time on understanding need in our community. It's sometimes easier for students to have a passive understanding of developing countries, war, child labour, poverty, and hunger. We are going to learn about some of the reasons for poverty and help people who are struggling with poverty in our own community. We also hope to highlight the needs of the people in our community in an audio-visual format.

Update (May 15, 2017)

We have spent a lot of time learning about the distribution of wealth in our world in Social Studies, really focussing on the particular needs of the citizens in our community. We’ve had a presentation from Vibrant Communities, talking about what can cause certain citizens to be in conditions that are challenging. We again hosted a ‘Citizens’ Voice’ initiative in our school and brainstormed with our class to see what young people can do about it.

On March 29th, we visited the Gower Street Lunch Program, which no longer serves lunch to the community, but they prepare baked goods to donate to a local food bank. Half of the class prepared muffins (from scratch!), baked and packaged them. Then the class switched out (my school was very generous to provide me with a substitute teacher for the day) and the other half arrived to prepare, bake and package. This newly-modified program is for citizens who might not get another opportunity for fresh baked goods. It was a rewarding experience to see how we can make a difference.

The needs in our class may not be the same as those in places where there is no clean water, but hunger and a place to sleep are very important. We're learning about the various organizations in our city who provide help to those in need of a meal, a shower or clean clothing.

Update (May 15, 2017)

A few weeks after the Christmas break, we had Ms. Ruth MacDonald come in and talked to our grade six students about poverty in our community. This was called 'Citizens Voice' where the children were given real examples of how people live on not much money. Following this presentation, as a grade level, the students decided to organize a 'Toiletry Drive' where over the course of several weeks, they brought in toiletries to be donated. Our student leadership team bagged the toiletries up and on April 13th, representatives of the Rabbittown Learners Program came to our school to talk about their program. The RTLP is a K-6 equivalency program which enables adults who have not received their high school to get their start at getting their general equivalency diploma. The staff of RTLP invited our students to come visit their school. This enabled my grade six class to really understand why someone would not finish high school - for whatever reason - and how that has affected their life.

Update (June 28, 2017)

The final activity my class did to help the people in our community was to purchase food for the Bridges to Hope Food bank. The students learned that Christmas and Thanksgiving are busy times for donations at the food bank, but that other periods of the year were hard and at times the food bank had to actually purchase food for the clients. They were able to donate staples for citizens in the community who use the food bank on a regular basis.