Students offer comfort to homeless
Students at Children of St. Martha’s School are planning to give the gift of love and comfort to those who are homeless in the city one blanket at a time.
Students at the school spent an hour Thursday afternoon writing up kind and encouraging notes for their “Blankets of Hope” campaign.
Blankets of Hope was started in New York City by brothers Mike and Nick Fiorito about three years ago to help the city’s homeless, and is slowly spreading to other cities in the United States. Children of St. Martha’s School is the first Canadian school to take part in the campaign.
“What Blankets of Hope does is provide free blankets to classroom and schools, and encourages children to write kind notes to attach to them to give encouragement to those receiving the blanket,” explains St. Martha’s kindergarten teacher Laurie McIntosh, who is organizing the campaign on behalf of the school. “The cool part is we also get to choose who those blankets go to. We were really honoured to be asked to be part of the program.”
The blankets will be distributed to the city’s homeless by the school’s staff next week in partnership with Streets Alive, but the real gift, McIntosh says, will be the hand-written notes which come with them.
“I think we can overcomplicate these things sometimes of what it truly means to make a difference and be kind to someone,” she says. “The blanket is a tangible thing which will help them and keep them warm, and provide a need for them. But I think the hand-written note attached to it by a child in their community says a lot as well. It makes people feel they are not alone, and it makes people feel like they are cared about and they matter.”
Kindergarten student Olive Hengveld says she hopes her note will let one person know he or she is loved.
“I think they would feel loved because they are going to get a note and feel much better,” she says. “And they won’t have to sit on the ground.”
Olive wrote in her note: “You are special the way you are, and you matter.”
Grade 6 student Yonathan Hail also had a special message he wanted to share.
“I said, ‘I know you are going through a very rough time, and I hope that this blanket helps you through the nights that might be very cold.’”
According to the City of Lethbridge, there are about 223 individuals in the city who are homeless, and that number has been steadily rising over the past few years.
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