In November of 2017, Adam Henry, the Alice Brown Elementary Parents’ Advisory Council (PAC) Vice President had been speaking with Langley District PAC President Suzanne Perreault regarding Christmas hampers and helping families over Christmas. He commented on how it would great if helping families and students was a year-round goal.
This started the conversation about how PACs can help other PACs if they have the resources.
Suzanne suggested that there a variety of opportunities to help and provided Adam a list of schools where Alice Brown could help. One school in particular came to the forefront of their conversations — Shortreed Elementary in Aldergrove. Shortreed had been fundraising to have the foundation of their playground replaced, as it had been failing.
The playground at a school needs to be safe, functional and have longevity. In December, Adam approached the PAC President at Alice Brown, Stephanie Stovold, and asked to present Alice Brown’s request to make a monetary donation to Shortreed to help attain their goal of raising $75,000 to replace the playground foundation. The Alice Brown PAC was fully on board.
Once the presentation was made at the January PAC meeting, the Alice Brown PAC voted unanimously to make the gesture. Adam spoke to Jodi Stiglic, the Shortreed Elementary PAC President, and she was very moved by the thought of their school and its students.
On April 24, Adam Henry and Stephanie Stovold proudly represented Alice Brown Elementary and gave a gift of $1,000 to go towards the replacement of the Shortreed playground foundation to the Shortreed PAC President, Jodi Stiglic, and School Principal, Tanya Rogers.
“We are never short of opportunities to do good within our district of schools and when we work collaboratively with our DPAC and PACs, children win,” said the statement from the groups.
Alice Brown and Shortreed PAC hope that this good news story will both inspire and help spread the word about the success for school PACs to work collaboratively to support each other. Volunteers can be hard to find with people having busy lives, however, when parents have opportunity to extend the time and resources they should help a neighbouring school such as at a Breakfast with Santa event or Family Fun Night — imagine how much more successful an event could be.