A school year worth of effort paid off as Vanier Collegiate High School's graduating class handed over their donation to the Make A Wish Foundation this past Friday.

It began at the start of the school year when students decided they wanted to honour a classmate who would have been graduating this year. Mason Clewis had passed away from cancer in 2011 and would have walked across the stage with Vanier students this year, which is why the class wanted to do something in his memory.

Since Clewis had received a wish from the Make A Wish Foundation, they decided they wanted to make a donation to the organization. It was an effort that a focused committee took on, but everyone got involved with helping one way or another.

 

"The ones who were a part of the committee were really good help and a lot of our classmates helped when we were doing our events and they would come in and sell candy bags or they'd come to a Tupperware sale," said Victoria Wourms, Chair of the Vanier Make A Wish Committee. "So everybody was pretty good [in helping] and everyone contributed in their grad fees with raffle tickets too which was nice."

Like the aforementioned Tupperware sale and candy bags, there was also a card fundraiser, paint nights, raising money to cut a student's hair, and they had multiple raffles with a Vanier dog house, a quilt, and other donated items.

Wourms even said that she hopes other classes will do something similar when it's their turn to graduate.

"I do hope that other grad classes consider doing it just because it teaches you a lot about working as a team and like planing things which is a really good life skill to have later in life and you make great friendships with people that you would never think that you'd be friends with, but you end up being friends because you have similar interests in fundraising and organizing and planning."

Originally they had a goal of $10,000, and although they came up short, they still managed to donate an exact total of $7514.26. With the help of the Clewis family, they handed the check over to Allyson Toye with the Make A Wish Foundation at Vanier's grad banquet.

"I think it feels really great because no matter what anything that we donated is helping someone in need and it's a really good feeling to know that everything that we did paid off and it's going to help someone out with their wish," Wourms said.