 No.14 The Newsletter of Project L.O.V.E. • WINTER/SPRING
2003 • PO
Box 2000 Charlottetown PE C1A 7N8 |
BOASTing about this thing called L.O.V.E.!Project L.O.V.E. stands for Let Older Volunteers Educate, and is our elementary school project. BOAST stands for Bringing Older Adults and Students Together, and we find BOAST volunteers in intermediate and high schools. In 34 schools across PEI, more than 250 very committed (mainly retired) older volunteers help students with their school work in various areas. In the elementary program, help is usually in that most important area, reading. L.O.V.E. Volunteers go to their school once a week, spending between an hour and a whole morning or afternoon in the school. They usually help one student at a time, listening and coaching them with words, reading aloud to model good pronunciation and expression for them, helping with classroom projects or to get caught up on missed assignments. BOAST Volunteers are more flexible - some visit the school once a week, while others work on short-term projects, which may involve more visits over a shorter period of time. The volunteer work is usually focussed on specific areas of expertise of the volunteer. Teachers whose students work with the Project L.O.V.E. volunteers all agree: Their students benefit greatly from this help, gaining self-confidence through the interest shown in them by the volunteers. Fundraising Campaign Success!Our 10th Anniversary Fund-raising Campaign has been a success. Many community groups have felt that Project L.O.V.E. deserves support, and have made contributions to support our volunteers. In particular, Project L.O.V.E. would like to thank the Kiwanis Club of Charlottetown. This Club was interested in supporting the 10th anniversary book collection and the stickers for students. More about this later in the newsletter! Other supporters include the Rotary Club of Hillsborough, the Rotary Club of Charlottetown Royalty, and Maritime Electric. There are others who are yet to be heard from as well. The Kids' Eye View: L.O.V.E. Art ContestIn celebration of the 10th anniversary of Project L.O.V.E., we have decided to hold an art contest for students who have been helped by you, the L.O.V.E. volunteers. Your Captain or Co-ordinating Teacher will be receiving a package of materials shortly, and we would like you to encourage your students (or former students) to draw a colourful picture of their experiences with you. We have provided paper (so all the pictures will be the same size) and an official entry sticker to put on the back of the finished picture, identifying the student and the school. Every student who participates will be given a pencil and eraser (also provided). We would like you to be judges for your school, and either get together or vote for the winner on your usual LOVE day. Please send the winner in the stamped envelope to the LOVE office by April 4 to be entered in the province-wide contest. Individual school winners will receive a special T-shirt, and the provincial winner will receive a cash prize from Project L.O.V.E. We will be keeping all the prize-winning pictures to use on our materials like our brochures, displays and our web-site. Many thanks for helping us get the "Kids' Eye View"of Project L.O.V.E.! Rewards for your studentsYou should have received stickers from your Captain or your coordinating teacher from the Kiwanis Club donation. These are for you to give to your students as a reading reward. Schools which regularly use stickers feel that they are a real motivator for students. We have also provided cards for the students to use to collect their stickers. For those whom you see regularly every week there is a larger card (5 x 8) and for those whom you see only infrequently (that is, if you will only see that child a few times in the year) there is a book-mark size card. We have included a note to the child and the Kiwanis Club logo as requested by the Club. If your students would prefer to keep their stickers in a sticker book that’s fine! The other reward provided by this donation from Kiwanis will be a gift book for a Grade Six student at each school. We would like to honour a student who has benefited from having Project L.O.V.E. help sometime during their school career. We are not quite sure how this will work, but we hope to have a nominations process of some sort. We’ll keep you posted on this! Introducing the Board of Project L.O.V.E.Many of you have met our Board Chair, Laura Mair, when she visited schools at their start-up meetings in the fall. What you may not know is that Project L.O.V.E. was Laura's idea. She called together a group of interested teachers, educators and older persons in the summer of 1993, and from that meeting Project L.O.V.E. was born! Laura has been involved with Project L.O.V.E. ever since, and this is her second year as Chair. Martha Fraser is our Vice-Chair, and she has volunteered at St Jean Elementary School in Charlottetown for a number of years. You may know Martha as a regular contributor to the Voice for Island Seniors, which comes out in The Guardian every month. Treasurer of Project L.O.V.E. is Liz Nimmo, who has been volunteering with Project L.O.V.E. since its very first year. Liz started at Montague Consolidated and now volunteers at our only High School BOAST project, in Montague High School. Our other Board Members include Joye MacKenzie, who volunteers for LOVE at Glen Stewart School one half-day per week, and for the school directly every other day of the week; Rose Howatt, who is Captain and also volunteers at Prince Street Elementary two half-days per week, Arthur Currie (see an article about him in the February issue of The Voice) at Englewood School, and Jack Jans who volunteers at Fortune Consolidated School. Our three newest members of the Board are Priscilla Ykelenstam, who has been at West Royalty School, one of our newest projects, since 2001, Marie Wood, who is the Captain as well as a volunteer at Georgetown Elementary School, and Irene Davison who volunteers at Queen Elizabeth Elementary School in Kensington. Evaluation Report Now AvailableThanks so much to the many, many volunteers, teachers and students who responded to the evaluation of Project L.O.V.E. last year. Although the report was prepared by an outside agency (the Tough Challenges: Great Rewards Committee) the results will be of great use to us here at Project L.O.V.E. Evaluator Cindy Wood has provided us with an electronic copy of the report, and so, if anyone would like to receive a copy of the report, please get in touch with the office and we shall be happy to print out and send you one. Did You Know? Department:Project L.O.V.E. provides transportation assistance for volunteers who need it. In Charlottetown, Summerside and Montague we have an arrangement with a Taxi company to take volunteers to and from school. Outside of these areas we can pay mileage to you or to someone who drives you to and from school. Please call the office for information about the taxis or for a mileage form to be mailed out. |
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