Lucky to be part of something special

By Pam Bourdon
Published: May 12, 2012

I have been lucky enough to be a part of something very special that happened during the past couple of weeks here at Stawamus Elementary School. 

I have taught at Stawamus for 11 years now, and during my time here, our school has participated in all kinds of different fundraising events for charities such as Jump Rope for Heart, Project Love and Unicef. 

Our staff recently decided to launch a fundraising campaign for a family here in Squamish that really needed our help.  

Mike and Kati Palethorpe’s 18 month old daughter, Lina, is battling a form of cancer called neuroblastoma.  Lina is going to need some very expensive treatments that she will be receiving out of our province. 

We decided to have a week long coin drive, and sell popcorn at our student led conferences, and donate the procedes to Team Lina.

We made the coin drive a challenge by having kids bring in specific coins on prescribed days (ie. Pennies on Monday, nickels on Tuesday, and so on).  

The response that we got to these two activities was truly amazing.  

Our little school of less than one hundred students raised over $1500!  

Jocelyn Harry, Brooklyn Willmot and Shelby Mecham set up lemonade stands on the weekends (without any prompting from the school staff) so that they could donate more money to the cause. 

The Palethorpe family visited the school on Tuesday for our weekly assembly so that the students could meet Lina and present the family with the donation cheque. 

It was a very touching and proud moment for students and  staff.  We will be anxiously awaiting news about Lina’s surgery that is scheduled for mid June in Toronto. 

We all have our fingers crossed for her speedy recovery and we wish the family all the best in the months to come.