THUNDER BAY - For 16 days, students at a local high school collected hundreds of unique items in the spirit of the holiday season, and while they were not collecting food or money, their donation will help change someone’s life all the same.
Students at Westgate Collegiate and Vocational Institute collected toiletries and toys that were donated to the Beendigen Crisis Home on Thursday. The collection took place for the past 16 days in every home room.
“The first week we got nearly 200 items so we were just a little under for a total of 280 items from the school collectively,” said Calie Hill, a grade 12 student at Westgate.
Items collected included soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and other toiletries, as well as toys for children. Hill said she was surprised by how much was collected in such a short time. While all the home rooms took part in the challenge, one home room class raised nearly half of the 280 items.
Jaime Adams, a grade 11 student, said the students wanted to collect these items for the women’s shelter because violence against women is an issue sometimes overlooked.
“Violence against women is very important and I don’t think it is brought up enough,” Adams said. “We decided at Christmas time it is really important to give so we decided to give back to our community the best we could.”
Tammy Boyd, a crisis support assistant with Beendigen Crisis Home, said she was overwhelmed by the donation from the local student body.
“These donations from the Westgate high school students is a tremendously amazing gift,” she said. “It will definitely come in handy and assist all the women and children in our homes.”
According to Boyd, all the items collected are in high demand from the women and children who utilize Beendigen’s services.
Hill and Adams said they have been learning more and more in class about the challenges many of the women face when experiencing violence and are forced to flee their homes, which helped contribute to the strong show of support from their fellow students.
“I think the teachers told some students of the situation some of these women and children are in in these homes and what they did to get out, what they left with, and what they didn’t leave with,” Hill said. “I think it really got to some of the kids.”
“I think it was a really big eye opener,” Adams added. “You think that people have all the essentials like toiletries, but in lot of these places, they don’t. Stuff like that is expensive and it’s hard to get.”
For Boyd, seeing all the donations from the students demonstrates that the issue of violence against women is not being hidden away.
“It’s about awareness,” she said. “It’s tremendous that they are taking it to this level.”
