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Sheridan Employees Get Packing to Help Children in Need

Sew in Fire, Sheridan College,  | Sheridan College
Sew in Fire, Sheridan College, | Sheridan College

Over 900 employees gathered this morning for the College’s annual Welcome Back breakfast to kick off the start to another academic year.

To commemorate the occasion, Sheridan partnered with Sew on Fire, a registered charity in Burlington, Ontario and challenged its employees to assemble 10,000 care packages in about 20 minutes to help give children around the world the basic items needed to go to school and learn.

Sew on Fire is 100 per cent volunteer run. It sources donations of products and engages hundreds of volunteers to package them. The 20,000 care packages that it creates each year are sent across Canada and to 92 other countries around the world.

"This challenge represented a perfect way to engage our people in a meaningful activity and to be true to Sheridan’s core value of global citizenship.” - Dr. Jeff Zabudsky

“Our employees are incredibly caring people,” notes Dr. Jeff Zabudsky, President and CEO at Sheridan. “Many of them work in this sector because they want to help people succeed. This challenge represented a perfect way to engage our people in a meaningful activity and to be true to Sheridan’s core value of global citizenship.”

To launch the activity, employees heard from the founder of Sew on Fire, Wendy Hagar. “I really believe that every child should have the opportunity go to school, not only in Canada but around the world. I believe that an education for a child brings hope and freedom for the future, and it also helps beat poverty,” said Hagar. “In many countries when there’s a foreign vehicle, children may run alongside and say ‘pencil please, pencil please’ because they know if they have a pencil that’s all they need to get into a school. They know that if they can learn how to read or write, it’s going to change the station in their lives. That’s my desire, and that’s what you are going to help us with this morning.”

Taking up the task with zeal, employees separated the items that are donated in bulk and worked in teams to reassemble them into care packages of school supplies, basic hygiene items, folders full of lined paper and small bags of hard candy. The goal of 10,000 packages represents one-half of the total number of packages that Sew on Fire sends annually.


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