Carol Baldwin
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Wakaw Recorder
On Monday, Dec. 9, RJC High School’s Faith and Life Committee invited the community into the school’s dining hall to dine and donate in support of the Good Neighbours Food Centre.
RJC High School is student-centred, community-focused, and welcomes students of all cultures and backgrounds. Rooted in the Anabaptist-Christian faith tradition, it is the school’s mission to make a difference in the world by preparing leaders in faith, service, and peacemaking. RJC emphasizes building relationships across differences and one way to do this is by putting faith into action.
With a goal of ‘putting faith into action,’ RJC students have an annual fundraiser for local and global causes. The Faith and Life Committee is a student-led group of high school students, the size of which changes with the year, but this year involves about eight students. Fundraising revolves around the students and their interests and strengths, so every year the fundraising effort may look different because it evolves from what the students are interested in. Over the past 10 years, these fundraisers have helped raise over $55,000 for homeless shelters, international women’s cooperatives, and responses to food insecurity in Canada’s north and around the world and are examples of growing the whole student into a citizen for tomorrow.
Food insecurity is not just somebody else’s problem, and the students at RJC step up where they can see the need in the world and want to make a difference. GNFC is a close-to-home charitable organization that RJC feels is important to support.
Through the different times the students have stepped up to ‘lend a hand,’ they saw the need at GNFC and were inspired to do the Dine & Donate fundraiser. They were excited to bring their creativity, youthful energy and sense of fun to create a bit of energy around giving back to the community at Christmas.
President and CEO, Ryan Wood, said he and the RJC staff ‘work alongside the students to help channel their energy and creativity to do a fundraiser.’ Having the kids, with their energy and creativity, do the work shows them how to do it throughout the rest of their lives. They learn how fun it can be to do something that gives back to the community. It is not about the amount of money that is made, that is a by-product of the learning experience, the educational value comes from learning the ‘how-to’. Students are empowered to know that they can organize and run a fundraiser, and that empowerment will multiply for the rest of their lives as they give back to their communities wherever they may go.
Wood believes that “events that help us to look outside of ourselves are bridge-building and unifying events for ourselves and our community. And the more we can have students see things that can bring us together the better off we’ll be as a school and a society.”
RJC is open to all students regardless of race, religion, or life background. The school teaches from a Christian perspective which includes values such as giving to those less fortunate and looking beyond oneself. Those values are ones that most people are comfortable with being part of, regardless of their perspective when it comes to religion and there is a tremendous buy-in, Wood said, by students, regardless of background, for projects that reflect those. Religion can be divisive, but what is not divisive is giving back to your community and to use Wood’s words, “RJC is happy to champion causes like that, which bring unity and bring out the best of people.”
Another aspect of ‘looking outside themselves’ is the Alternative Learning and Service Opportunities (ALSO) Week which occurs in the spring of every year. Over 5-14 days of intensive service, learning, and volunteering, the entire RJC student body and staff, partner with community organizations and faith groups in Saskatchewan, the Okanagan, Appalachia and Guatemala to respond to issues of poverty, food security, racial inequality, injustice, and systematic violence.
The Dine & Donate event raised over $5,000 for Good Neighbours Food Centre and on Friday, December 13th, students from the Faith & Life Committee took the wish list from GNFC and went shopping to fill their shelves of the Santa’s Toy Shop, where food bank clients can choose a gift for those in their homes. The students ‘shopped local’ and supported the business community in Rosthern, and then delivered $1,500 worth of toys and a cheque for $3,550 to Good Neighbours Food Centre. Former Executive Director, Betty Rudachyk, said in a post on RJC High School’s Facebook page, “The coming together of community members to help other community members is the definition of ‘Neighbours Helping Neighbours’!”
When asked about the ideas for the fundraisers, Ryan Wood said each year is a fresh start, whether it is the fundraising, the musical, or the concerts because each of those things grows from the students involved. It is the students themselves who bring the creative energy to what they do, nobody steps into somebody else’s shoes, they bring their own shoes and their own passions and energy into whatever they do. It is new students taking lead roles, a new group of students delving deep into themselves and discovering parts of themselves they did not know existed. The goal is never to raise a certain amount or produce a musical that outshines the one last year, the goal is always to help the kids know they can do it: to empower them with the confidence to shine.
“Schools have to do well for society to do well,” Wood said. You have to invest in educating the next generation and developing the whole person. If young people can be taught how to build bridges and relationships, and if they can see how they can make a difference both locally and globally, then, kids are smart, they will take that knowledge and those skills and make the world a better place.”