VANCOUVER—Hungry and lonely Downtown Eastside residents received a brief respite thanks to a recent visit from Catholic, Jewish, and Shia Ismaili children.
Students from the three faith-based communities delivered 2,000 meals and 500 goody bags with encouraging notes March 11. Lineups extended around the block.
“I was a little nervous because I don’t go around the area that much,” said Catherine Camparmo, a Grade 7 student at St. Augustine’s Elementary School.
Children from St. Augustine’s, Vancouver Talmud Torah, and the Shia Ismaili community joined forces to distribute the gifts. They had assembled the goody bags themselves, packing deodorants, socks, and handwritten notes into packs for the poor.
“It didn’t really seem to matter what our faith was; we just all wanted to help out and give something back to the community.”
It’s an idea that sprang up out of interfaith projects a year ago between teachers Jessie Claudio at Az-Zahraa Islamic Academy and Shoshana Burton at Richmond Jewish Day School. Their students jointly delivered 1,000 meals to Downtown Eastside residents.
“This year both Shoshi and I are working at Vancouver Talmud Torah and created a Chesed, which means kindness, club at our school,” Claudio said. “By creating this club we were able to continue amazing interfaith projects.”
They launched their first interfaith project with St. Augustine’s in December; Jewish students paid a visit to deliver dreidels and to teach their Catholic peers about Hanukkah.
“That created quite a spark in our community,” said St. Augustine’s principal Catherine Oberndorf. “It helped the students see that we all have a faith that we are all involved in and passionate about.”
Claudio, a Catholic, decided to invite students from both schools, as well as young members of a local Shia Ismaili community, to take a trip to the Downtown Eastside.
She appealed to Tim Hortons to supply enough food to double her previous 1,000-meal record and asked the children to create care packages with handwritten notes.
Claudio said the children interacted with the Downtown Eastside residents in memorable ways on the field trip.
One man “grouped them all around him and said: ‘This bag is amazing. These gifts are so cool. But you know what’s even cooler? This note right here. This is all I need.'” She said he placed it in his back pocket.
“That’s where service learning projects are so powerful. The next time they see someone on the Downtown Eastside, they don’t pre-judge them. They see them as: ‘How can I give them something? I don’t have money right now. Maybe I can say something to them?’ You’re opening the door for the rest of their life experience.”
Shannon McIntosh, a Grade 7 student at St. Augustine’s, packed and delivered four gift bags filled with shirts, socks, water bottles, hand sanitizer, and other items.
“It was really hard to write the cards, because you don’t really know what to say to these people who don’t have much,” she said. “I was so happy that I was there to help the people that need our help.”
Camparmo said she doesn’t regret the experience “for a millisecond.”
“It has greatly impacted the way I look at society, and has inspired me to do more and to, maybe, as my profession, go into something that works with people, preventing them getting on the streets in the first place.”
