School is supposed to be a safe place where students feel at ease, while learning. In contributing to this ideal Ruth Maygard on behalf of the Pheasant Rump First Nation recently presented the Arcola School with a total of $3,000.
Pheasant Rump gave $1,000 for the school to use towards the Breakfast Program. This program is in place to provide healthy food such as fruit and granola bars to students who may have missed breakfast or didn't bring enough food to school.
"We did it last year as well and it's for the whole school... some kids are hungry when they get to the school and then there's breakfast stuff in the library there for them if they need," Maygard said.
It is a program that ensures youth have fed their minds to be able to function best in the classroom.
The remaining $2,000 was given to the school in support of Challenge Day, which will be held on Oct. 30 for grades seven to 12.
"They had asked in the spring if we would help out withthe Challenge Day, the workshop they're holding with Challenge Day, so... we said yes we'd like to help them out because the whole community is going to benefit," Maygard explained.
Challenge Day aims to improve the atmosphere of any school it is used in.
"Challenge Days are powerful, high-energy programs in which youth and adult participants are guided through a series of experiential learning processes," Challenge Day Coordinators write. "The overall goals of the program are to increase personal power and self-esteem, to shift dangerous peer pressure to positive peer support and to eliminate the acceptability of teasing, violence and all forms of oppression."
"The Challenge Day Program is designed to unite the members of the school or community and to empower them to carry the themes of the program back to the school population."
The program, which was held in Lampman last year and was touted as being very successful by participants including grade eleven student Carley Greening who spoke with The Observer last week concerning her experiences with the program, has been in existence since 1987.
Throughout the years it has helped to open up over half-a-million teens and adults across the country.
"We're going to the challenge day as well , we'll [the council] be going to volunteer," Maygard stated, "And then there's a couple other staff members that want to go as well and be there for the kids."
Maygard and the Pheasant Rump First Nation saw both the Breakfast Program and Challenge Day as important ways for youth to gain the opportunity to grow. In relation to helping benefit youth, Pheasant Rump Council also contributes to the school in various other ways.
"We try to help out as much as we can," Maygard explained. "I sit on the board for the SRC meetings and the other council members, when there's something at the school, will volunteer."
