December 2021: The Year in Review
Looking Back at 2021
They say that “hard times reveal true friends.” 2021 has been a busy year for us at Vancouver Career College. While the global health crisis brought the entire world to its knees, we decided to fill our year with positive acts. We managed to spark moments of connection and community with our neighbours through these challenging times. From nurturing the earth to building up our youth, our campuses have made a difference in little and big ways across the country. Let’s look back on some of those moments.
2021's TOP STORIES
Locked Up for Love for Rennah!
A heartwarming story emerged from the Vancouver Career College Abbotsford campus. Siak A., a student who had just started taking the medical lab assistant program, had a daughter who was born with mitral regurgitation and cardiomyopathy. In layman's terms, it means that a valve in her heart wasn’t working the way it needed to. At just nine months, she was fighting for her life. Siak’s fellow students from Vancouver Career College rallied around the family in true community spirit, raising money to ease their financial burden. On Saturday, September 25, Vancouver Career College’s community fundraiser Locked Up for Love collectively raised over $16,000 for seven-month-old Rennah’s heart transplant. Chairman Peter Chung generously promised to match their amount. The community was $15,000 shy of the $50,000 fundraising goal before the Saturday fundraiser. Now with the help of local communities across the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Career College, Rennah’s family will have enough money to get her a new heart and relocate to Edmonton post-surgery.
“We’re so honoured to be able to rely on the support of our community”
- Cassandra Fyfe, Campus Director
“We’re so honoured to be able to rely on the support of our community,” says Cassandra Fyfe, Campus Director, Vancouver Career College Abbotsford. “When we heard about Aiesha’s situation, we wanted to come together and do whatever we could to help. We are extremely proud of our community and the social services worker class. The Social Services Worker class took the initiative to plan this community fundraiser and help their fellow student in need.”
Indigenous Initiatives
We acknowledge that our campuses operate on the ancestral and unceded territories of the many First Nations, Métis, and Inuit who have walked these lands for centuries. We are committed to furthering Indigenous causes and education around their history, culture, languages, and essence.
We ran a national fundraiser on Orange Shirt Day, raising $1,000. Students and staff all came together, wearing orange and donating what they could to raise awareness of the tragic legacy of residential schools and to honour the thousands of Survivors. We resolved to continue to learn and educate our college community and the wider community about Truth and Reconciliation moving forward.
Business of the Week
Many small businesses endured significant revenue loss due to COVID-19, so Vancouver Career College launched Business of the Week. We supported local small businesses to aid their economic recoveries and enhance their post-pandemic brand awareness. We leveraged our website and social media channels to coffee shops and patisseries to restaurants, pharmacies, and retail stores to feature a new business each week. The businesses received extra support from their local communities through custom blog posts, discount codes, and social media contests.
Mental Health is Health
Mental health includes our emotions, feelings of connection to others, our thoughts and perspectives, and being able to manage life’s highs and lows. With the pandemic, everyone’s mental balance was thrown off. Fear and uncertainty, normal responses to a threat, were rampant, causing a rise in anxiety and depression. Early this year, we ran a social media campaign to amplify and share stories about mental health. A big part of self-care and mental hygiene is being able to unburden ourselves and share our emotions, struggles and journey. Using the hashtags #mymentalhealthstory and #SupportingBC, people opened up and told their stories, hence destigmatizing the topic, and paving the road for a healthier collective.
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