There was an obvious appeal for a number of parishes to help schools in remote northern Canadian communities when the Anglican Church Women Board members learned of this possibility in November 2020. The form of help initially had to do with sending school supplies. It is not that these northern schools lack supplies completely, but when they run low, they have limited opportunities to replenish; moreover, even if there is access to basic school supplies for purchase in their community, the cost is prohibitive.
Basic school supplies for many communities come once a year by barge and sometimes are flown in, but the extra items that teachers love to have for the students, the fun items like seasonally-themed notepads, pencils, pens, erasers, stickers, décor items and the like are not available locally. Moreover, basic school supplies are needed in abundance now because none of the usual items that are often shared among the students can be used in that way in the midst of a pandemic.
How did the Anglican Church Women Board even hear about this remote northern communities initiative? Well, it was an item in the print media that started it: the subject of the Cape Breton Post story, Annie E. Johnson, Director of Administration for UINR (Unama’ki Institute of Natural Resources), Eskasoni, was using Facebook, to raise awareness of a need for school supplies in a number of remote northern communities. You do not need to know a lot about social media to know that news spreads like the proverbial wildfire when it is shared on Facebook. And spread it did! You just have to google Annie’s name or “remote northern communities” to learn about the initiative.
By spending some time with the Facebook thread, the Board was able to secure the names and addresses of a number of schools that could benefit from receiving school supplies and sometimes warm clothing items. We thought there might be parishes, youth groups, Sunday Schools, or Outreach Teams in our diocese ready to “adopt-a-school” as a Lenten / Easter Project, and it seems that such is the case. We even have a former Board member knitting up a storm of toques to be sent to one of these remote northern schools. So far, we have adopter parishes in the following regions: Cape Breton, Chebucto, Chignecto, Dartmouth, Eastern Shore, Fort Sackville, and the South Shore. In pairing schools and parishes for this “adopt-a-school” Lenten / Easter Project, we have learned that the schools named in the Facebook communication have already benefitted from supplies coming to them from as far away as Japan!
If these specific schools are being inundated, it struck the Board that in all of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, there are more than the schools we knew of and that these additional schools could likely benefit. A very quick google search yielded a list of all schools in these two Canadian Territories. Googling the name of the school yields the postal address, phone & fax numbers, the principal’s name, and often additional information. So, anyone in our diocese interested in adopting a school for a Lenten or Easter Project can contact the Board’s e-mail address: [email protected] and a match can be made very quickly.
We know that Annie Johnson in Eskasoni has been surprised and delighted to learn about the connections between Cape Breton and these remote northern communities. More google searching on our part yielded a Nunavut News item profiling the Springhill, NS born and raised principal of an elementary School (K – 5) in Iqaluit, NU. Scott MacDonald did his BEd degree at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax and his MEd in Leadership from Acadia in Wolfville.
It was great to have several Board members alert to the print media coverage of this remote northern communities enterprise in the Cape Breton Post and to bring news of this potential outreach project to the attention of the Board in November 2020 at their Zoom meeting, but it is the initiative of Annie Johnson in Eskasoni, using Facebook, that has allowed support for these remote northern communities to come to life. It is the googling and e-mail research of the Board that has expanded this enterprise to potentially include even more schools for parishes to participate in an “adopt-a-school” project. Remember to contact the Board’s e-mail address: [email protected] to secure an “adoptee school”, if you are interested. And, it is the direct contact that some Board members and adopter parishes have had with the schools that has generated increased interest and excitement.
There was a day not so long ago when vocabulary such as “Zoom” for meetings, “Facebook” and “E-mail” for connecting, and “Google” for gaining information would have been unheard of! Regardless of the innovations expressed by these terms that have entered our lexicon, we still appreciate the good old fashioned print media, such as “The Diocesan Times”, as a vehicle for sharing our stories and encouraging support for our initiatives, one of which is the Board’s 2020/21 Annual Project. We continue to welcome your prayers and contributions for Supporting Parents: Stories that Matter, knowing that this is another way of fostering a relationship with our Indigenous neighbours in the north. Thank you for your ongoing support.
