Members of the Oak Park High School Youth in Philanthropy Committee.
In October 2016, members from the Oak Park High School Youth in Philanthropy Committee attended the YIP Fall Conference to learn more about what Youth in Philanthropy is and tools for a successful year. Then later on in November, we participated in A&O Support Services for Older Adults “Be a Santa To A Senior” where students paired up and bought a $25 gift for seniors who don’t typically get visitors or gifts for the holidays.
In December, we started a new project for Willow Place Women’s Shelter to create care packages. We then applied for a YIP in Action grant and were successful. As a committee we asked our school and community for donations of women’s toiletries. Once we finished collecting donations, we made a list of everything we had, then planned to set off to purchase what we still needed.
In the new year, we got together as a committee and started to discuss different organizations to visit. As a committee we decided to visit seven organizations.
On Feb. 27, committee members set off to different organizations across the city. This year we decided to look at the smaller organizations, so we got to learn about Winnipeg’s smaller charities, what they do and how we could help them out.
Our first site visit was to the Ronald McDonald House of Manitoba. There we got a tour of both the house and the Family Room in the Children’s Hospital. We also got to interact with one of the families staying in the house which helped us see the real impact they were making on families.
Our second site visit was to Willow Place. There we got to see how they help women not only by giving them a place to stay but with the multiple resources they have to offer.
The third visit was to The Dream Factory. There we were shown a presentation of multiple families with sick kids who got to go and enjoy their child’s dream. It was nice to see what kind of an impact we could make on not only a child with a life threatening illness, but also letting the family enjoy these special moments with them.
Our last site visit was with Circle of Hearts Family Support Network. We learned about how they help kids with heart problems and how they make their lives a little bit easier by doing things with them like sending kids to camp or providing hospital parking passes for families.
After our site visits, we got together as a committee and discussed what happened on our site visits. We then looked over what each organization could use help with and decided as a committee who to grant.
Aside from granting, we continue to collect the final items for our Willow Place project; packages we will soon be delivering to Willow Place.
Check out more Youth in Philanthropy stories on CNC at Young Winnipeggers Connect 2017.
