Everybody Deserves a Smile: Teaching empathy and living compassionately
- syoung679
- 12 hours ago
- 4 min read
Students in the Everybody Deserves a Smile club spend months exploring compassion education, collecting community donations, and preparing and decorating care packages with personalized cards for people experiencing homelessness in their communities.
École Puntledge Park Elementary has a history of celebrating the festive season with a focus on compassion and empathy. Students in the Everybody Deserves a Smile (EDAS) club, in collaboration with over 23 partnering school communities in Comox Valley, spend months exploring compassion education, collecting community donations, and preparing and decorating care packages with personalized cards for people experiencing homelessness in their communities.
The project started in 2004 when Madame Chantal Stefan and her three friends left 88 handmade care packages around downtown Edmonton. The packages were filled with sugar cookies, baked following her mom’s recipe, a pair of Costco socks, and a handwritten note expressing love and connection for anyone alone on the streets of Edmonton that Christmas. Those 88 care packages were hung from garbage bins, and overnight they all disappeared.
Madame Chantal introduced this project to her principal, Kevin Reimer, during her last teaching practicum at École Puntledge Park Elementary. With the collaboration and hard work of the Puntledge school community, this little moment of kindness has now grown into a district-wide initiative that includes thousands of care packages delivered across multiple cities in BC and Alberta, and even Montréal, Quebec and London, England.
The EDAS club gives Grade 7 students an opportunity to step up as leaders within the school. The students in the club meet with community guest speakers throughout the year, including families affected by addiction and the Community Coalition to End Homelessness, to learn about stigma, poverty, and privilege. Club members build their skills in leadership, project management, and public speaking while developing empathy and compassion.
These students and partnering school communities co-ordinate with local businesses and community members to organize donations for the care packages. Donations include woolen socks, toques, scarves, gloves, toothbrushes and toothpaste, soap, and—to keep the tradition alive—cookies baked following Madame Chantal’s mom’s cookie recipe.
Thousands of sugar cookies are baked every year by Rotary Clubs, home economics classes, and families from the school community. Last year’s cookie call-out saw nearly 9,000 cookies baked, decorated, and donated in Comox Valley alone.
Once the donation campaign is over and all the items for the care packages have been collected, the EDAS club and their teacher-leads organize a packaging day in their school gymnasiums. Up to 200 classes have collaborated to make this packaging day possible. Each student carefully packages donations into the gift bag that they have decorated with their classroom teacher. Included in each package is a heartfelt holiday card designed, decorated, and filled with a message written by a student to share hope and joy with the recipient. Each card is signed with the student’s first name to add a personal touch.
The packaging day is made more festive with local musicians creating an atmosphere of joy in the school gym. Families from the school community and EDAS alumni are also invited to participate in packaging and making deliveries.
“Students put so much care into making and selecting items for the care packages,” said Madame Chantal. “It’s heartwarming to watch.”
The EDAS care package project exists in tandem with larger classroom learning around empathy and compassion, rehumanization of unhoused people, addiction, stigma and stereotypes, poverty and privilege, leadership, service, hope, and impact. The project has accompanying resources for teachers to guide students through learning. The classroom kits and curriculum resources have all been co-created by the EDAS Teacher Team and teachers across participating districts. They include lesson plans, a study guide, book suggestions, videos, inquiry questions, vocabulary, and reflection prompts.
The goal of this learning is to help students develop an understanding of homelessness and addiction while also fostering empathy, compassion, and student leadership for action. The online resources are connected to the BC curriculum core competencies and big ideas for primary, intermediate, and secondary grades.
The classroom learning happens throughout the fall, leading up to the packaging day when students thoughtfully package the gift bags with a more thorough understanding of the impact their work will have.
“I’ve learned a lot about poverty that people face in the Comox Valley. Working with others at EDAS gave me a chance to learn ways to make the world a happier place,” said Zoë Mather-Whyte, EDAS club member.
The EDAS club students and partnering school communities then participate in delivering the care packages to homeless shelters, soup kitchens, library programs, low-income housing, support agencies, and directly to people experiencing homelessness on the streets. The opportunity to connect with community members who impart their experiences with homelessness and addiction has a powerful impact on students and staff.
“I walked into the shelter not knowing what to expect. As I started to meet the guests, I got to see a side of them that not many people do. Every smile I saw reminded me that love isn’t just in what we give but in how we give it,” said Magnolia Wise, EDAS alumni.
The Comox Valley EDAS club is part of a larger EDAS network across Vancouver Island and beyond. So far, over 32,000 care packages have been provided to community members by students in Campbell River, Comox Valley, Nanaimo, Port Alberni, Duncan, qathet, Victoria, Vancouver, and Red Deer, Alberta. Special EDAS projects also exist in Montréal, Quebec and London, England.
For students, the opportunity to learn about homelessness while also being compassionate and making a difference is invaluable.
As one Grade 5 student reflected, “The experience made me think that there is many reasons that people are unhoused and they don’t choose to be there. EDAS kind of changed how I feel about unhoused people.”
