Westwood Collegiate Youth in Philanthropy students volunteering at local charity, Koats For Kids.
This year, our Youth in Philanthropy group at Westwood Collegiate decided to focus on the arts.
We noticed in previous years YiP groups had usually selected certain areas to look at, such as homelessness, animals, or issues affecting women. All the while, there were other agencies that needed aid as well. So, we wanted to help some of the organizations that did not have much support.
Seeing that our school is very arts oriented, providing programs such as drama, dance, choir, vocal jazz, concert band, jazz band as well as arts, choosing art as our focus would relate well to our school.
Researching arts organizations proved to be a little difficult. We did not think there were many but when we searched the internet, we found a tremendous variety of arts groups.
With so many arts agencies operating, finding out about them became a great opportunity to learn and to explore new places and unique activities in Winnipeg. Getting to know more about the arts community was very interesting as it allowed our group to gain a deeper understanding of Winnipeg, and provided us with the knowledge we needed to make grants to several arts organizations.
Beyond doing site visits and granting funds to arts groups, we also wanted to volunteer in our community. So, as a group we decided to help out at Koats For Kids.
In this way, we discovered volunteering to be an important aspect of YiP, because like YiP, it involves exploring the community while helping others.
In addition, we wanted a group bonding experience to share our thoughts and help each other out. It was a fantastic volunteering opportunity as we had many laughs and provided a lot of help towards the organization.
Volunteering at Koats For Kids was an inspiring, informative and team building activity for Westwood Collegiate YiP student group.
