"Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."
John Wooden
In the bitterly cold winter of 2012/2013 we launched our first community program after reaching out to the Chilliwack Bowls of Hope Society. The purpose was to find out how many local children were arriving at school in non-adequate winter coats. 1,000 students with a staggering funding goal of over $40k to ensure that no child was left behind.
Our first call was to Shelley Howe, General Manager at Staples Business Depot in Chilliwack who shared our same goals. She ensured her entire team was on board with helping us reach our target, and Staples Chilliwack quickly became our official cosponsor of the "We Got Your Back" Backpack Program.
After discovering roughly 400 kids were in need of proper winter attire, we connected with like-minded businesses throughout Chilliwack to fully fund our first-year program. Thankfully we were able to make sure no child was left cold in the winter with the support of our generous community.
To date these programs alternate each year between Coats for Kids and Boots for Kids supporting upwards of 1000 kids from Chilliwack to Boston Bar. We have proudly through the generosity of business owners, we have been able to have the honor of working with active members of our community to keep these programs running.
Since 2012, we as a sponsorship team have put over $500k in goods and supplies back into schools in Chilliwack to Boston Bar. These funds supporting everything from School Supplies, Winter Boots, Winter Coats, Tablets, and Laptops partnered with Chilliwack Canadian Tire and we could not achieve these goals without the support of General Manager John Boris and his team.
With the success of our 2013 "Project Warmth" program, we connected with the Chilliwack School District to see if there were any other needs that were being left underfunded and learned the need for school supplies was extremely high. Upon further investigation, we found the need was as high as to funding the expansion of the school district's agriculture program to primary students.
As needs change so does our sponsorship year to year. We look forward to new sponsorship partners to ensure each child in our community has what they need throughout the school year.
Stay tuned for details of the next We Got Your Back and Project Warmth Campaign. For more information, please contact us.
Thank you to all of our sponsors!
Media Partners:
Platinum Sponsors:
Business Leaders:
Community Sponsors:
