For Riley, a Grade 7 student at C.R. Judd Elementary School in Capreol, a big part of the Christmas season will be making sure everyone shares in the holiday spirit.
He’s finishing the final touches on a Christmas posters for seniors at Pioneer Manor in Sudbury – a hand-drawn reindeer appears to be leaping across the page, flying over squiggly candy canes and small, ribboned squares at the bottom of the scene representing a swath of presents.
“This is special to me because I know there's some people who don't get to see their family for Christmas,” Riley said. “And I'm just trying to make their Christmas brighter and more fun.”
Just a few seats over, Riley’s classmate, Tyson, is sketching a Christmas wreath with pencil crayons– it’s all pine cones, holly and blue spruce – with a generous red ribbon holding it all together.
Getting to spend class time working on cards, knowing the art is destined for one of Sudbury’s largest care facilities, is a special endeavour for Tyson.
“It makes me feel like a superhero,” Tyson said. “Because this can make a lot of elderly people happy.”
On the other side of the classroom, Jasmine decorates a sparkly letter “J” – cut out from construction paper – that she plans to paste onto a large poster hanging on the whiteboard.
It’s part of a collaborative piece that several kids are working on, a Christmas poster that will also be hanging in Pioneer Manor’s halls.
The idea behind the posters, Jasmine said, is to make Pioneer’s residents “feel happy.”
“It’s so they know that they can still celebrate stuff like Christmas,” Jasmine said. “Even though they're somewhere different, and not with their family.”
Just a few minutes later, another classroom joins in – the Grade 4-5 cohort of the school’s Core French program.
Grade 5 student Hadley gets busy on her own card – a waving, friendly-looking snowman stands beside a decorated Christmas tree, while inside Hadley has written “Joyeux Noël.”
“I hope the people at the nursing home feel happy,” Hadley said. “And I hope they hang it on their wall or something.”
Having kids make Christmas posters to display at the Sudbury retirement home is part of an initiative led by Arielle Bretschneider, National Account Executive for tech company The Kore Project.
The Sudbury-based company has thrown its support behind Bretschneider’s mission – a few hours here, a few more hours making phone calls over there – and pretty soon Bretschneider had convinced both the school leaders and the students to channel their creative spark into these gifts.
The Rainbow District School Board was more than happy to take part in the project, and with the blessing of Core French teacher Liz Heard, the students were soon at work.
“I had grandparents with Alzheimers and dementia that lived in old age homes and assisted living,” Bretschenider said. “Sometimes they didn’t remember who we were, but what made them happy was always receiving homemade posters, because they knew that it meant something to them.”
In early December, Bretschneider said she will be taking the posters to Pioneer Manor, one of the largest long-term care facilities in Northern Ontario.
“We’ll be putting the posters into the main communal areas within Pioneer Manor,” Bretschneider said. “Where the people will be able to go and see them daily, and look at them daily, and kind of just get that little piece of joy.”
It’s an encouraging sign when the community can rally behind a feel-good cause, Bretschneider said.
“I find it to be a lost art, where people engage in projects that involve community,” she said. “Nowadays, everyone's so busy, and there's always all these things going on where people make excuses, where they can't help others and do for others.”
“But it makes me hopeful that my ideas of promoting community will carry forward, that somewhere within that group of children, they’ll see the initiatives and see the effect and the ‘why’ of what we're doing, and as they grow up, they’ll continue on with these initiatives.”
To anyone familiar with The Kore Project, it won't come as a surprise that key members of the team would be so involved in the community, and put so much effort into recognizing those who might otherwise be forgotten.
The principal function of the KOREid software has been to ensure that people’s voices are heard – to make sure that everyone is being seen, and that everyone has the opportunity to contribute.
The idea for kid-designed posters at Pioneer Manor started as just that – a simple, thoughtful idea – of The Kore Project CEO Andre Lapierre.
“My wife's grandfather was at Pioneer Manor for a really long time, a couple decades,” Lapierre said. “His wife had passed away long before. He was alone, he was stuck in a wheelchair, and the Manor was his home.”
As Lapierre’s own family grew, regular Sunday visits to the Manor became part of their weekly traditions, where they came to know the facility’s staff and other residents.
Those visits from the Lapierre family became “big things,” Andre said, enough that residents looked forward to the troupe arriving, bringing lively, energetic family-type sounds, laughter and energy to the retirement home’s hallways.
This year, Lapierre connected with the residence’s staff, asking if he could help out during the holidays. One of Pioneer Manor’s staff asked if he could help coordinate a poster campaign – slightly different from previous years where residents received cards during the holidays– as a way to create a bigger display for everyone.
The posters would be arranged along the walls in Pioneer Manor’s common areas like kitchen, sitting areas and hallways– a walk-through art galley, Lapierre said – that people could look at, enjoy, and reflect on.
“It kind of gives a bright light in some situations,” Lapierre said. “The nurses love seeing the residents light up and communicate with each other – they’ll ask ‘hey, did you see that one?’ and ‘how about this one?’ and it never gets old. They’re always seeing something new.”
Fortunately, Lapierre had plenty of staff at Kore who jumped at the chance to help, including Bretschneider who arranged for the C.R. Judd contingent to design their cards and posters.
And having that kind of immediate buy-in from the staff – not to mention entire classrooms – has been heartwarming.
“It gives you a sense that the world is all right, that we haven’t lost humanity. We haven’t lost compassion,” Lapierre said.
“It makes me feel hopeful that future generations will remember this, when they get older and have their own kids, that they're’ going to say ‘hey, we did that. We should do this again.’ and they’ll take the opportunity to do good and to help their communities.”
Lapierre said he believes that small gestures can have a lasting impact, shaping how children view community and their role in it.
“Sometimes it just takes one action,” Lapierre said. “And it could drastically change how these kids think for the rest of their life, how they think of community. Some people think, ‘well, what's the point? It's just one card. It’s just one Christmas.’”
“But it's amazing when you look back at people's lives and you ask, ‘what was a pivotal point in your life?’ And they'll mention this one thing. It's that one thing that changed the way they think and feel and act.”
As for seeing his peers and co-workers jump to the ready to assist strangers over the holidays, Lapierre says he’s thankful, although not surprised by their generosity.
“I look at them as family,” Lapierre said. “And I think you always hope your friends and the people you work with feel the same way.”
“And I do feel that I hired the right people, but at the same time, I think that good people find each other.”
