Keeping the kids warm
Centre donates kids' jackets for third straight year in Rankin
Darrell Greer
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, November 5, 2014
RANKIN INLET
It's a community's responsibility to try and ensure every child is able to dress warmly during the winter, says the executive director of the Pulaarvik Kablu Friendship Centre.
George Dunkerley began to really take notice of the view outside his office window three years ago, and he wasn't thrilled by what he saw.
He'd look out in worry as some kids would pass on their way to school, badly underdressed for the rapidly dropping Kivalliq temperatures.
Dunkerley said he started a program to provide warm jackets for the kids in 2012 with funding from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
He said the funding allowed Pulaarvik to put a number of former residential school students to work sewing jackets for the kids.
"We donated the jackets to Leo Ussak Elementary School (LUS) in 2012, and, this past year, we combined it with items we received from a community winter-clothing drive." said Dunkerley. "The items we received from the clothing drive were used, but we were able to make some new stuff for the younger kids and some of the elders. This year, because funding from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation no longer exists, we're using the sewing class at our pre-natal nutrition program to provide the material and put the jackets together.
"We're only able to do it for the kids this year because of the loss of the healing-foundation funding."
The friendship centre distributed about 40 jackets to kids and elders in the first year of the program, and followed that up with 33 this past year.
The names of 26 kids are on the centre's list this year, with the first five jackets having been delivered this past Thursday, Oct. 30.
Both the friendship centre and staff at LUS are careful not to stigmatize any of the children needing jackets.
Dunkerley said there has never been a time when a parent declined a jacket being offered to their child.
But, he said, there have been times a family did not wish to be identified.
"We take pictures when we donate clothing to the school to include with our advertising material. But, if parents don't want their child in the picture, we, of course, respect their wishes.
"We don't focus the program on the wealth or well-being - perceived or otherwise - of any particular family or families.
"We've had good feedback from some of the families who received the clothing we donated, and it makes me feel good when I see them walk by my office the following morning wearing their new coats."
