Meadowfields students raise cancer awareness and hope through the selling of stars

By Tina Comeau

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

The stars don’t only shine above Meadowfields Community School in Yarmouth at night. Throughout the school day stars fill the main foyer of the elementary school with rays of hope and awareness.

This is the third year students at the school have been selling stars, at $1 a piece, for a wall of hope in advance of their annual Terry Fox Run, which is planned for Friday, Sept. 26. The stars ¬– which can be purchased by students, staff, families and the public – display names honouring those who have died from cancer, those who are battling the disease and those who have survived their cancer fight.

Aside from raising money for cancer research through the Terry Fox Run, the wall raises a lot of awareness within the school.

Students involved in selling the stars – the 6-Ferguson and 6-Nakpil classes – say the stars really make students realize how many people within the school community have lives that are touched by cancer. Students Jordan Ferguson and Emily LeBlanc say they recently sold a star to a student, just six years old, who had lost a parent to cancer.

The students also demonstrate their devotion to the cause by giving up their recesses and lunch hours to sell the stars. And parents who visit the school always stop and read the names on the wall.

Unlike some other schools, Meadowfields doesn’t send students out with pledge forms to raise money for the Terry Fox Run. Rather they rely solely on a variety of fundraisers like penny drives, bake sales and the Wall of Hope.

However like other schools, there is an added incentive for their fundraising efforts.

This year if the students raise $2,500, vice-principal Bruce McDowell has agreed to shave his head. If $2,800 is raised, principal David Sollows says he will shave his goatee.

But most of all it is hoped the main incentive for the students is the message contained on the wall of hope, on which an angel says to a likeness of Terry Fox wearing his Marathon of Hope t-shirt: “It just keeps growing. In fact, hope is starting to spread faster than cancer.”