Thanks to All!!

A special thanks to all of you who participated in the Global Education program, and to our volunteers who gave their time to educate Canadian students about current global issues impacting the rural poor.

With our volunteers, CHF was able to:

• Educate more students than ever before through our presentations in Calgary, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver - over 14,000 students to be exact!
• Deliver 307 presentations at 257 schools across Canada through the hard work of over 60 committed volunteers.
• Distribute 2,151 development-focused lessons to teachers who contacted CHF or who met us through our booth at the 18 teacher conferences we attended this year. Over 40,000 students are expected to learn about development issues through the use of these lessons.
• Reach thousands of students, schools and communities who showed their engagement and support for development issues through their involvement in two student contests, three community events kicked off during international development week and many individual school activities.
• Raise over $40,000 through the efforts of students, teachers and volunteers across Canada! Thanks to our 3:1 match from CIDA, this means that over $160,000 of support was received to improve the lives of the rural poor through CHF’s sustainable livelihoods approach.

Other highlights from the year:

• The Global Education program expanded to Vancouver to fulfill its next stage of expansion.
• We’ve revised our lessons to an electronic format that also fits the new Ontario curriculum and added an easy-to-use search function on the website.
• Lastly, we updated our high school presentations to use a more participatory workshop format focused on how climate change and the global food crisis affect the rural poor.

Stittsville Public School Participating in Kids Helping Kids Around the World and Raising Funds to Improve the Lives of Rural Communities

Thanks for remaining committed to educating students while at the same time working together to raise funds so that rural families can reach their aspirations!

Volunteers gave over 2500 hours of their time

The GE program is only able to reach thousands of students because of the requests for our resources from teachers and the commitment of its volunteers. Every year CHF receives hundreds of applicants who want to volunteer. We select and train about 60-70 volunteer Global Educators to deliver presentations and provide support to the GE program and they have done a tremendous job in classrooms this year.

In addition, we have another 4 volunteers who act as our Lead Volunteer Coordinators. Together they train, motivate and educate their teams to make a difference in their local communities. A sincere thank you to Andrea Zipprick (Calgary), Jana Miller (Ottawa), Chantal Flores (Toronto), and Sheelah Ziajka (Vancouver) for your dedication to CHF and its GE program over the past year and for the countless hours you put in to make sure this program is successful.

Do you know someone in Calgary, Ottawa, Toronto or Vancouver who you think would be a great classroom presenter? Encourage them to consider getting involved in our Global Education program! Contact globaled@chf-partners.ca for more information.

Poll Shows Canadians Care About Global Poverty

Despite gloomy economic forecasts at home, Canadians are clearly engaged in the fight against global poverty and believe their country should be committed to addressing this issue, a new Angus Reid Strategies poll for the Alberta Council for Global Cooperation (ACGC), in partnership with the Wild Rose Foundation, has found.

In the online survey of a representative national sample, nine-in-ten Canadians (89%) say they believe Canada should be addressing global poverty in some way, with three-in-ten (29%) actually placing global poverty as a higher priority than local issues.

In addition, one-third of Canadians (34%) say they make an effort to get informed about global poverty, 18 per cent talk about this issue with others, 13 per cent report having made a donation, and four per cent have written a letter to politicians.

For more information, click here.

Looking Ahead to Next Year

While our program will be taking a break over the summer, we will be back and better than ever in the 2009-2010 school year! You can look forward to some of the same great resources that you have used in the past as well as new resources to help you instill a sense of global citizenship in your students. If you’re planning ahead, consider setting aside time in your classroom to book one of our presentations available in Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary or Vancouver or using our Show What You Know Media Literacy contest as a class project for your media-savvy students. You can also look forward to a new high school engagement activity as well as a new presentation.

We wish you all the best for the summer and look forward to working with you next year.