Couple saw need and took action
Twelfth Avenue Elementary: Pair raised $18,000 — most of it from their own pockets — and gave their time to help students
D avid Westrheim was reading his Vancouver Sun one Saturday morning not long ago when he happened upon an Adopt-a-School story detailing just how many local schoolchildren show up at school every day not having eaten breakfast.
“By the time I got through it, I was weeping,” says Westrheim. “I just had no idea that this was going on in every jurisdiction.”
And then he did something he never does.
“I woke up my wife ... and started explaining it to her.”
Karen Cheng agreed with her husband: children going hungry, right here in B.C., right here in their own backyard, simply isn’t acceptable, no matter the reason. They wanted to do something about it.
So they contacted AAS administrator Cathy Stooshnov and found out just how many schools had filed recent applications for grants from The Vancouver Sun Children’s Fund Adopt-a-School program.
They also learned that since 2011, Sun readers have contributed close to $2 million to AAS to help feed, clothe and provide the basics for thousands of needy children in more than 100 Metro Vancouver public schools.
The couple, after much due diligence, decided to focus on Twelfth Avenue Elementary, which sits on the edge of a little park near the corner of 10th Avenue and Canada Way in Burnaby.
Westrheim, 55, was born in Vancouver but was raised in Burnaby, so he has a connection to the community. Cheng, 59, immigrated to Canada as a schoolgirl and spent her youth in Port Coquitlam.
The couple arranged for a visit to the school, which had applied to AAS for $3,000 to continue its in-house breakfast club through 2015. But it soon became apparent to the pair, after chatting with principal Marilyn Kwok and learning from support teacher Angela Chen, that the needs of the students at Twelfth Avenue go well beyond providing a nutritious breakfast every morning for several dozen youngsters.
“We went back to the principal’s office and sat down, and they explained some of the darker details,” says Westrheim, president and CEO of the technology services company intelliNet.
Details like children arriving in class not just lacking a hearty breakfast but without shoes, or warm clothing, or the basics required to get a good start. Details like children going without gifts, or even food, on holidays.
“I’ve been a business owner all my life so I looked at it differently. I said: ‘How much would you need to look after all these things? What about food on weekends and summer holidays? What about Christmas?’ ”
He asked Kwok to do a revised budget, a “dream list,” and she obliged. To cover all those things, through the end of 2015, she estimated, would require funding of $ 18,000. Some other donors had come forward in the interim to help out, but in order to reach Kwok’s goal, Westrheim and Cheng found themselves writing a cheque for $10,000.
When the couple returned to the school to present the cheque, they also rolled up their sleeves and helped prepare and serve breakfast to dozens of schoolchildren.
Together, Kwok and Chen express their delight, and their gratitude, with the donation: “The students, staff and community of Twelfth Avenue Elementary are very grateful for the generous donation from David Westrheim and Karen Cheng of intelliNet. Their gracious donation to Twelfth Avenue Elementary will make a significant impact on many of our students’ and families’ lives.”
In their generosity, Westrheim and Cheng represent exactly what Adopt-a-School set out to accomplish nearly four years ago, and that was to not only identify needs right here in Metro Vancouver and then raise enough money and goods from businesses, societies and individuals to help meet those needs, but to get communities — and the people who have a connection to those communities — involved.
When this newspaper founded AAS, under the banner of our 34-year-old Vancouver Sun Children’s Fund charity, we hoped that our readers would literally adopt a school.
And that’s what Westrheim and Cheng have done: Because they care, the children of Twelfth Avenue Elementary in Burnaby are now settling into their seats at the morning bell with full stomachs, ready for another day of learning. Or, as David puts it: “Having lived my entire life in Metro Vancouver, I had no idea of the widespread existence and volume of how many children are affected with these problems. I found the situation to be unconscionable. I have never been hungry a day in my life. All this talk about traffic and pipelines? It’s important, but this tops the list.”
sfralic@vancouversun.com