Parents group kick-starts online “BC Teacher Food Bank Drive”
Posted August 31, 2014 9:09 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – A Metro Vancouver parents group has kick-started an online fundraising campaign to buy grocery gift cards for teachers struggling who remain on strike. Naomi Lazarus says and other parents set up a fundraising page called “BC Teacher Food Bank Drive” along with a Facebook page to get the word out.
She says the group just wants to do what they can to support the teachers, even though it may seem as little as she admits, “We’re parents. We’re nobodies. We’re not fundraisers. We just want to help the teachers.”
She realizes that some teachers might be having a tough time making ends meet while on strike.
“A lot of teachers are single parents, there are a lot of families where both the income bringers are teachers, and there are a lot of families that are really suffering because they are going without an income. We’d like there to still be teachers at the end of the strike and not have lost them to other trades because they had to pay their bills.”
The gift cards will be handed out through various local teacher associations in the Lower Mainland.
“We’re going to start distributing grocery store gift cards on probably Tuesday or Wednesday and obviously as more money comes in we will be able to distribute more cards as it goes along,” she explains.
In just a few days more than $1600 has been collected.
