This year Saskatchewan Polytechnic’s Indigenous strategy team has handed out 250-holiday hampers to Indigenous students across the province. The online campaign was sponsored by Farm Credit Canada (FCC).
Initially, the target was to give out 150 hampers to students currently attending a Saskpolytech campus across the province who identifies as Indigenous.
Applications are reviewed based on financial needs. Out of those 250 online applications, 78 families from Moose Jaw applied.
“During the pandemic, when our campuses were online and virtual, we had to pivot our service delivery to ensure students were able to have a holiday hamper so we went with gift cards and we are maintaining the program this year through the gift card process,” explained Deanna Speidel, Saskpolytech Indigenous Strategy director.
“Within 10 hours of the program launching on our social media and website, we received over 220 applications so we had to close the hamper application process down. This is the first year that we have ever had this type of situation occur.”
Additional funding to support the extra applicants was allocated from the Global Day of Giving.
Donating to the Indigenous Student Success Strategy empowers Indigenous students and creates an initiative to remove barriers and create a welcoming and inspirational space for them to grow.
“There are lots of organizations throughout all cities in this province that allocate holiday hampers for every Saskatchewan citizen. Indigenous Strategy works with this specific population of people and really understands the social economics and the education barriers that our students face trying to obtain an education. We just want to make sure that we are supporting them the best way that we possibly can this holiday season.
“It is the season of giving and our students come from a population that is living on a student income. Knowing this is a stressful time of year we wanted to ensure that our Indigenous students would be able to have a successful delivery of joy during this holiday season,” Speidel concluded.
