Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

The kids are all right

Sea to Sky corridor rife with enthusiastic teenage philanthropists

Kids today get a bum rap as being lazy, videogame dependent, junk food eating, non-empathetic zombies. Or so say countless news and magazine articles written by baby boomers who idealize their own daisy-chain childhoods while lambasting the tech-generation for misunderstood cultural norms.

Contrary to popular belief, healthy, socially conscious teens are flourishing in the communities of Pemberton, Whistler and Squamish and they're doing a lion's share of work for local and international charities.

Sisters Megan and Nicole Pidperyhora of Pemberton recently organized a food drive at Signal Hill Elementary with the goal of stocking the shelves of the new Pemberton Food Bank. Capitalizing on a pound-for-pound matching initiative offered by Shaw Cable and Campbell's Soup Company, the girls met with school officials to get permission to approach primary and intermediate classrooms with a collection challenge, offering ice cream sundaes to the classes that brought in the most food. Within one week they had gathered 1,306 pounds of groceries. Shaw and Campbell's tripled that amount, upping the grand total to 3,918 pounds. Pemberton food bank organizers were thrilled.

Nicole is a well-spoken Grade 7 student at Signal Hill. She learned about the food bank initiative through her father, Sheldon Pidperyhora, a Shaw Cable employee who was championing the company's Fill the Food Bank program to friends and colleagues. After attending this October's We Day festival in Vancouver with a number of other Signal Hill students, the 12-year-old decided to tackle food security issues in her hometown.

Organized by Free the Children, a non-profit dedicated to improving conditions for high risk children globally while encouraging kids to get involved in volunteerism, We Day 2010 featured presentations by Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore, actor and activist Martin Sheen, former child soldier Michel Chikwanine, and Free the Children founders Marc and Craig Kielburger.

"It was just an awesome experience because they had such inspirational speakers and they talked about how easy it is to make a change and if you want to see change in your world you have to be the change," said Nicole. "It just sounded like such a simple thing to do and with how much work we put into it and the results, well, there was not very much work and an amazing result."

Signal Hill vice-principal Jeff Maynard says that encouraging students to be socially conscious members of the community is a key ingredient to the creation of exceptional adults later on. He rounded up 28 students for this year's We Day event, each of whom expressed a serious commitment to a variety of local and international issues. Helping each of them pursue their individual philanthropic passions is just part of the educational experience he believes rounds out the academic formula.

"That's the nature of developing students' minds, is getting them to think about issues in the world and how we can solve them and thinking through different challenges and problems and these two girls saw something that they wanted to do and saw it as something that could make a difference," he said. "Social change is an important concept, it is a form of education getting kids to think about the world and where they want the world to be so the We Day itself is an excellent avenue for seeing inspirational people talk about ways to make the world a better place."

Over the past year, Signal Hill Grade 7 student Jodi Duncan has involved herself in the Because I'm a Girl campaign aimed at improving living and educational conditions for young women around the world. Her mother, Maria Duncan, is thrilled with how much independent focus her daughter has put towards researching various issues within the campaign, not to mention the increase in confidence apparent in her teen.

"You can hear it in her voice that there is some passion there, so I want to facilitate that and be here and keep encouraging her however I can. It's neat to see," she said. "She was really pumped so I kept encouraging her and any information on that sort of thing is fantastic, especially for young girls nowadays with the bombardment of the magazines and TV and glitz and glamour. If they can get a view of the other side I think it's great."

 

Active in Squamish

At Don Ross Secondary School in Squamish, staying abreast of various social issues is just part of an average day for students involved in Interact, a Rotary International service club for youth. Interact members have participated in two We Days and run a variety of fundraisers for Free the Children and other charities throughout the year. Part of their organizational mandate is to contribute to community service projects, which they do with enthusiasm, but on top of those tangible gains participating students achieve a great amount of personal growth.

"Interact has really opened my eyes to issues throughout my community and all around the world as opposed to just focusing on my school," said 15-year-old Grade 10 Don Ross student Brittany Shier, who acts as co-president of the club with Maegan Bruce. "It has also given me many opportunities to meet with other teenagers who share the same goals as me and also adults who started out just like me and made a difference in many people's lives."

Included in the Don Ross Interact club's to-do list is a Halloween food collection in partnership with the Interact Club at Howe Sound Secondary; a homelessness awareness project; and a fundraiser for Free the Children called Vow of Silence. They have raised funds for the local SPCA, organize an annual student auction, a Christmas raffle and food drive and complete a 30-hour fast each year to raise money for the Emmanuel Boys Rescue Centre in Kenya. Last year they raised $3,000 during the 30 Hour Fast, which was matched by Rotary International.

"Basically between the two Interact clubs and the Rotary Club, we single-handedly support the Emmanuel Boys and keep that organization going throughout the year," said Don Ross teacher Stephanie Potter-Davey. "I think that through the years, elementary school teachers and organizations that come into schools have played a big role in getting kids to think about empathy building and that it's guided by the teachers but taken on by the students. I think that when students have the power and the control to do things on their own, they bolster that energy and that altruism themselves."

Between sports, church, and school, Don Ross Secondary student and Interact co-president Maegan Bruce is more than a little bit busy. The Grade 10 student makes time for volunteerism because it brings her satisfaction to know she's helping "real people with real problems."

"I've also gained many leadership qualities and knowledge about situations worldwide," said the 15-year-old. " There was a time when I wouldn't have been able to tell you what polio was but through Rotary's help we are starting a Pennies for Polio drive during the next few weeks. It's great to understand more of what's happening in our world."

Free the Children and We Day founders Craig and Marc Kielburger are no strangers to the altruistic tendencies of youth. Craig was only 12 when he founded what would become the world's largest network of children helping children. Now 27, he and his brother, 31, organize enormous amounts of intellectual and financial capital for children's causes worldwide. When asked if kids today have earned an unfair reputation, they collaborated on a response.

"Young people have an incredible ability to create change in the world - it's just a matter of encouraging them to get out there and do it. By bringing these young people together at We Day, we are showing them that there are others out there who have similar interests. In our roles with Free The Children, we have the opportunity to witness the power of youth to create positive social change every day."