This Christmas season, 80 Abbotsford preschool and kindergarten students joined 2,000 Wind and Tide preschoolers from across the Lower Mainland to partner with Union Gospel Mission (UGM) in providing essential food items and gifts for 56 low-income families.
Rachel Cram, founding director of Wind and Tide Schools, prompts her students each Christmas to learn about the needs in their own communities and to play a part in solving those needs.
She does so through UGM’s Gifts of Hope initiative, where each year her students assemble holiday hampers for families in need.
In November, each school received a list of much-needed food items, as well as information about the gender, age, interests and hobbies of each family member.
The students at Wind and Tide brought donations from home, carefully chose toys and gifts, and watched the hampers fill up.
Each hamper is packed with all of the food items needed to prepare a Christmas dinner and includes gift cards to purchase a turkey, groceries and dairy as well as a personalized gift for each family member. UGM delivers the hampers to families in Vancouver’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods.