St. Patrick’s Community School – Faith Retreats

The school will offer four grade-specific retreats throughout the year. The Grade 6 -9 retreats will be with NET Ministries to engage students in a meaningful dialogue about their faith. The other retreats will be at Camp Kuriakos to give students the opportunity to explore God’s gift of nature and their own faith journey through games, skits, music and prayer. This initiative has been allocated $5,600.

Testimonial

  • This funding served students from Kindergarten to Grade 9 by enhancing Catholic education by igniting the faith in each of our students regardless of where they are in their personal faith journey.
  • School retreats bring the Catholic faith to life through music, keynote talks, activities, and prayer.
  • Elementary and Middle School students each had their own day of with Face2Face Ministries with the yearly theme of, “Purpose.”
  • Elementary students learned about how God has a purpose and a plan for each of us that far surpasses anything we could ever imagine for ourselves.
  • Leaders explored how students can stay close to God and live the awesome plan He has for them using their “GPS.”
  • Middle school students learned how to use the time God has given us “on purpose.”
  • Students considered how they use their time and were challenged to find a healthy balance by offering the truth that the joys in life are a gift from God, but are only a “free sample” of the actual joy and purpose that can be found in Him.
  • All students and staff were engaged in times of reflection, prayer, and community.

St. Teresa of Avila School – Bucket Filling for Jesus Brigade Retreat

The Bucket Filling for Jesus Brigade is a group of Grade 4 and 5 students who choose to be leaders in the school community to support mental, emotional and physical health initiatives. These students will get the opportunity to attend a retreat at Sacred Heart Parish. There will be a mass in the morning and the afternoon will be filled with training and planning sessions encompassing faith. This program has been allocated $900.

 

Testimonial

The ‘Bucket Filling for Jesus’ Leadership Club members chose to change their name to ‘Health Champions’ at the beginning of the school year. Though the name has changed, it did not shift the priority of the group but rather allowed for student voice. Our club members were encouraged and supported to grow in their faith journey through our offsite retreat, acts of service and leadership opportunities throughout the school. All students attended a Leadership Retreat early in the year at Sacred Heart Parish where they participated in faith-filled activities. The retreat focused on leadership qualities, conflict resolution, new games to share with students and food preparation.

Our Health Champions also worked hard to help our school counsellors promote ‘Food for Mood’ by leading classroom discussions about how to nourish our bodies so we are spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically healthy. Student Leaders have monthly commitments, one being to help at our monthly Bucket Filling Assemblies to create excitement by leading certificate recipients in with signs/pom poms. Their second monthly commitment is a job that requires them to demonstrate leadership skills around the school in a variety of ways, such as creating a bulletin board to promote healthy life choices, providing outdoor equipment for each grade to use during recess, helping our kindergarteners during lunch, organizing and running games at recess. Leaders model our virtues and promote these through their work in our school all year long. The funding from the Education Foundation was used for supplies/food for our off-site retreat at Sacred Heart, supplies for school activities and our Halloween candy exchange program thus far. Typically in the spring, we use the remainder of the money to purchase supplies for our outside PLAY program to encourage mentorship with our younger students.

A big thank you to the Education Foundation for supporting our programs at St. Teresa of Avila School!

Father Henri Voisin School – Packing up for Literacy

Students will create “Literacy Backpacks” that contain a variety of books and activities. These backpacks incorporate reading, writing, speaking, listening and viewing to help students better interact and understand text. This project was given $600.

École Camille J. Lerouge School – Pure Witness Ministry Team

Grade 6 – 9 students will get the opportunity to partake in a Pure Witness Ministry Team retreat. These retreats challenge students to love a life with Christ as the centre. This initiative has been allocated $4,000.

 

Testimonial

During the week of April 8-11 2019, the Pure Witness Ministry Team visited our school and led full-day retreats for our middle school students.  Thank you for allowing this great opportunity to happen. One student remarked, “It made me think about others, how everything I do can affect so much about other people, all I want is to make others happy, laugh… I don’t want people to be left behind…” Thank you again for the funding! 

 

 

St. Patrick’s Community School – Peer Support Team

The school embarked on a project that involved the creation of a peer support team to help encourage spirituality, leadership and mentorship as well as to support emotional and mental health needs of youth. The Education Foundation allocated $1,000 toward the cost of a leadership retreat for the peer team.

St. Patrick’s Community School – Dual Language Books

We helped this school to meet their unique challenge as a school with a high population of ESL students by purchasing a variety of fiction and non-fiction dual language books. The Education Foundation believed this was an exciting and innovative way to encourage belonging, and to set children up for greater success. This project was funded this $2,500.

St. Marguerite Bourgeoys Catholic School – Stations of the Cross

The school has expanded and in order to celebrate our Catholic Identity, they planned to include a ceramic depiction of Stations of the Cross in their new student gathering area. We allocated $3,000 towards this project.

St. Marguerite Bourgeoys Catholic School – Faith Based Classroom Libraries

The school purchased faith-based books for their K-5 classroom libraries to support their focus on faith and literacy. The Education Foundation allocated $1,500 to assist with this project.

St. Francis of Assisi Middle School – NET Ministry Retreats

Grade 7 and 8 students were given the opportunity to grow and develop as faith leaders by attending NET (National Evangelization Team) Ministries of Canada’s program “Who are you?” The Education Foundation contributed to the retreat costs through an allocation of $2,250.

St. Elizabeth Seton School – Technology (iPads)

The school purchased iPads for their Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 1 classes to aid in student development of knowledge and skills. The Foundation allotted $3,885 to aid in this purchase.