Fundraisers: Copy this

If you've got a kid in school — hell, if you've got a zygote on a daycare wait list — you probably know from school fundraising. Perhaps you have memories of funding drives from your own school days, back when chocolate almonds — now allergically-incorrect — were the coup de grâce of money-making initiatives. Along with, of course, the car wash, the bake sale, and picking up trash on the side of the highway (or was that just a B.C. thing?).

Anyway, if, like me, and you'd rather die than ask another neighbour to buy gift wrap, magazine subscriptions, or a side of beef, the cockles of your heart (and wallet) would have been warmed by an event I witnessed at Alexander Muir/Gladstone Ave Jr. and Sr. School last week.

Partnering with Ted Corrado, executive chef at C5 in the Royal Ontario Museum, the school put on a fundraising dinner May 19. Corrado and a team of volunteers and teachers fed 300 students and family members, who paid $5 per person for a hardy, kid-friendly meal. The proceeds will pay for bookshelves in the library to house a collection of books donated to the school through the Indigo Love of Reading program.

For all my reticence about selling stuff, the truth is that the fundraising efforts of teachers and parents, particularly the core groups of moms and dads that make up parent council and its committees, pay for really important extra-curricular activities, libraries, breakfast programs, etc. — surprisingly basic stuff that really should be there to start with.

There's a huge disparity in fundraising potential between schools in affluent neighbourhoods and those in inner-city schools such as Alexander Muir. These schools can't summon pairs of Leafs tickets and week-long vacations for silent auctions with a few phone calls from well-placed parents.

That's part of what makes a healthy, well-priced meal such a win for Alexander Muir and its community.

"They're all really grateful," said Corrado. "It's really heartwarming when they come and say thank you because they don't get this everyday."

The meal was paid for by C5 partners — the ROM and Compass Group. Cookies and squares came from the Drake Hotel, just around the corner. The Gladstone Hotel hosts a second fundraising dinner for the school each year, this one priced at $40 per person and targetted to people outside of the Alexander Muir community.

Teacher Nancy Presedo not only oversaw last Tuesday's event, but pulled off the ultimate in on-deadline baking feats, making 300 cupcakes the night before (thought of which makes even an enthusiastic cupcake mom like me weep quietly).

Presedo has been organizing these dinners for five years. Proceeds have gone toward an art program most years, and last year's paid for murals created under the tutelage of artist Allycia Uccello, who guided students in an art program that saw each child contribute.

"This is an inner-city school and we just wouldn't be able to have arts programs like this without these dinners," said Presedo. "We're just really privileged that Ted could do this."

Corrado's advice to others schools? "Reach out to a chef in your neighbourhood and make it a community thing."

Cute kid quote of the day

From 6-yr-old, Kieran, who surely has a future in marketing, to the pizza-delivery guy arriving at our movie party Friday:

"Oh, I knew you were from Hot and Fresh Pizza Pizza!"

Cute kid quote of the day

"A thesaurus is a dinosaur who wears glasses."

Amy, 4

Cameron quote of the day

On his pizza and movie night this Friday, which has morphed into a birthday-party sized event:

"I'm sorry that I invited so many people but I just didn't want anyone to be left out."

The "Giller prize of Canadian children's literature"

The winners of the 2009 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Awards were just announced.

Here they are if you're looking for good books for your kids, or gift ideas for summer birthday party season.

Children's picture book:

Chester's Back, by Mélanie Watt (Kids Can Press)

Watt is the Montreal author of Scaredy Squirrel, which won the same award in 2007. Chester's Back is the sequel to Chester, a cat and illustrator with an ego ballooning from recent fan mail. The book pits Chester against author Mélanie Watt, who holds open auditions when Chester goes a little too Hollywood. Students jurors called the book "very funny" and "very original."

Young adult/middle reader book:

Libertad, By Alma Fullerton (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)

This book by the Middleton, Ontario author of In the Garage and Walking on Glass is the story of Libertad, who tries to help his mother eek out a living in a Quatemala City dump, while playing the marimba to raise money for his younger brother's school supplies. But when their mother is killed in an accident, the brothers must set out on an epic journey to find their father, who has gone to the United States in search of work.

The awards, worth $6,000 each, were selected by two juries of young readers at Market Lane Junior and Senior Public School. The awards are administered by the Ontario Arts Foundation, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canadian Booksellers Association.

Here's an article we ran recently on Mélanie Watt's appearance at a Scarborough School.

Cameron quote of the day

"What if I get constipated in space?"

On why it might not work out for him to be an astronaut.

Why I'm inspired by my children's nanny

Thank you for the thoughtful comments to my previous post on the topic of nanny abuse. You voiced your outrage, and that was heartening for me. Some of you really called into question the whole live-in caregiver program. Here's what "Sophie H." proposed as a solution.

There is a solution.

We legalize a class of immigration for these same women called immigrant or refugee caregivers with a loan repayment program as we do with other immigration classes. We continue to admit these professional women with the same educational criteria (doctors, teachers, nurses) from the same countries and provide them with the same rights as other newcomers. We provide them with a living allowance and a decent housing allowance and permit them to bring THEIR CHILDREN AND ELDERS.

We allow this class of caregivers with small children to provide child care in their homes through home child care programs which are licensed across Canada through governed, publicly funded agencies. We allow them to provide elder home care on a rotational four and eight hour shift basis as was done by agencies like Visiting Homemakers and VON in the 80s and 90s.

Doing so will address multiple challenges:

1. we will see reduced exploitation of vulnerable caregivers;
2. we increase the wellness of this group of newcomers by providing a decent wage, family and community supports, Canadian employment experience and training;
3. we fill a gap in care for children and elders in our community;
4. we acknowledge the tremendous pool of education and professional and personal abilities of this class of newcomers;
5. we demonstrate compassion as a society and impart acceptance and cultural curiosity as a value to our children and elders.

Caregivers who are cared for and supported are better providers to the vulnerable. Newcomer professionals are superior caregivers and the structured Canadian experience provides them with an employment foundation upon which they can build Canadian accreditation -- perhaps not as doctors -- but as nurses, teachers, early childhood educators and community workers.

Thanks for sharing your ideas, Sophie H. I hope to return to this topic soon.

But today I want to share a little story of something that happened over the weekend. Our children's nanny is from the Philippines. Both she and her sister work as nannies in our neighbourhood, Bloor West Village. Our children's nanny is married to a man who is still back in the Philippines, while her sister - who has been in Canada for longer - lives here with her husband and children.

Sunday we were invited to the surprise 65th birthday party of our nanny's father. He and his wife have been in Toronto for a six-month visit, which concludes this Friday. So his surprise party was not only a birthday celebration, but also a farewell. It may be a while until they get back to Canada, where they hope to eventually live.

This will be just one of many, many separations this family has endured in order to provide for each other. The father worked for 16 years cleaning hotel rooms in Saudi Arabia, returning home to the Philippines just once every two years, while he was putting his four daughters through school. Not a fancy university program. School.

Now just one of the daughters lives in her home country. In addition to the two sisters in Toronto, one works as a nurse in Dubai, which makes her the real money-maker of the family right now. She's the one who paid for her parents' plane tickets to Toronto, even though she's got plenty of professional hoops to jump through before she can legally work as a nurse in Canada. As I mentioned, our nanny is still waiting to bring her husband here, and hasn't seen him for more than two years, and her older sister - the one who also lives in Toronto - endured that same long wait before she was able to bring her young family to Canada. I'm not sure when all four daughters were last in the same room with their parents.

But despite all of this — and maybe, in fact, because of it — these people really know how to party. On Sunday around 50 or 60 friends and family members gathered in a condo party room with abundant food, lots of children running about, plenty of smiling faces and even some Latin dancing! Everyone was dressed up and seemed to have cast-off their bigger-picture worries along with their work-week uniform of childproof jeans and T-shirt. They were enjoying the moment and each other. Making the most of their time. Remaining positive despite the sadness betrayed by eyes that get wet at the mention of this Friday's goodbye.

When I think of the problems we have — cajoling a reluctant five-year-old to go to tennis, run-of-the mill relationship break-downs, credit card bills that might make us wince — I marvel at how the Filipino community manages to remain so tight-knit. How do the marriages survive? I'm sure that not all of them do, yet I bet the odds are better than they would be for a long-distance marriage between any of us who don't have the cultural framework for this kind of sacrifice.

My thoughts will be with this lovely family as they have their last few group dinners this week. Let's hope the light shone on nanny abuse by the Star series  will pave the way for further improvements to the way we treat foreign caregivers in this country, and help expedite the process for these worthy new Canadians.

And if you haven't yet seen today's guest opinion column on the long history of nanny abuse in Canada, please take a moment to give it a read.

Cameron quote of the day

"Dad, why does Santa never die?"

Cameron quote of the day

To his friend as he was beginning to watch Star Wars for the first time:

"Is this really happening or is it a dream? Hit me, Davis. Hit me!"

In response to my suggestion that The Empire Strikes Back might be a little scarier:

"I'm up for it, Mom. I'm up for this challenge."

Cameron quote of the day

Try as we might not to entrench gender roles and images, I still hear stuff like this:

"You always look pretty to me, even if you're not wearing a skirt."

Cameron, age 6