A fund that helps the front lines in schools helps students and families who are struggling to eat or dress warmly is looking for help to supplement its dwindling resources.
“These teachers are seeing these students every day. Normally they are the first ones to notice when something is going on,” said Jackie Ellefsen of the Thames Valley Education Foundation that operates the “caring fund.”
“Kids that are hungry can’t learn,” she said.
A drive was launched this week for the fund that helps Thames Valley schoolkids and their families within 48 hours of a request for help.
“Over the past three years (the need) has increased significantly. I keep thinking it will get better, but it keeps increasing and increasing. It’s a bit relentless,” Ellefsen said.
This is the second time this year the foundation has asked the public to help replenish its caring fund. In June, it held a five-day fitness challenge to raise $25,000.
“It could be something as simple as a student showing up to school without lunches,” Ellefsen said. “The school can support them … so they come to school, (and parents) are not keeping their kids at home because they don’t have lunches.”
Or the problem “could be more robust, like a whole family isn’t eating and waiting for a check to come in,” she said.
Typically, Ellefsen said, he is a teacher, principal or social worker who identifies a student in need, with the principal in charge of distributing a gift card for a grocery store or buying food for a family.
The need from families has skyrocketed in the last few years, she said.
From 2008 to 2018, the fund gave out a total of about $500,000 in emergency supports, but in the last three years it has exceeded that amount as the cost of living has spiralled, Ellefsen said.
“It really has been a tough few years. There has been a 25 per cent increase in the number of requests over the same time last year,” she said. “Since September we’ve already given out over $100,000 to 400 students.”
One of the increasingly common reasons families are finding difficult feeding themselves is the consumer competition for low-cost items.
“A lot of what we are hearing is as food prices increase, families who are used to buying no-name, less expensive products are finding fewer and fewer of them on the shelf because other people are buying them,” Ellefsen said.
The fund is also used to purchase winter wear, she said.
“(They need) coats, boots, hats, mitts. A lot of families are using hand-me-down clothing,” she said. “It’s ill-fitting. (Proper clothing) reduces some of the stigma so students can come to school ready to learn. Kids who are being ostracized or stigmatized can’t learn.
Ellefsen said she knows the fund fits into “a much larger framework of support systems.”
“We can’t tackle this problem on our own,” she said. “What we want to do is have a response, so schoolkids keep coming to school and continue to learn.”
Ellefsen said while the fundraising goal is $50,000, the foundation expects to give out $300,000 in the remainder of the school year.
“If we raise more, we definitely need it, but we are trying to give ourselves a manageable goal,” she said.
To give visit www.tvdsb.ca/donate.