Make Poverty History - and the Ecole Leila North Community School

All week students at the Ecole Leila North Community School have been focused on action to relieve poverty in Canada and around the world. Their efforts have stressed four goals - providing more and better aid, promoting fair trade, eliminating the debt of the poorest nations and eliminating child poverty in Canada. The posters in the hallways - see above - go into details on each theme.

The finale for the week was a school-wide assembly on Friday afternoon. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the event.

During the one hour assembly, students came to the front to draw a new face on the board every three seconds - to emphasize the number of children who have died, worldwide, from poverty during the hour. We saw films and heard presentations. One of the videos was made by the students themselves - well done to all the students who participated.

Congratulations to the students who led this effort - Courtney, Brett, Nikki, Karilee, Haile, Angela and Elisa (I hope I have your names spelled correctly), and to the staff - Mr. Miles MacFarlane and Mr. Jamil Mian who helped.