Toronto Foundation for Student Success

Banking on Knowledge
Financial Literacy Grants Program

Wall St. football jock makes difference in the classroom
Toronto Star, November 25th, 2009.

A Grey Cup Party with No Losers
Globe and Mail, November 28th, 2009.

Finance for students
The National, CBC, December 3rd, 2009.
Please enter "Finance for Students" on the search engine.

Interview with Glenn Hadden
CBC Radio One, December 3rd, 2009.

On Tuesday, November 17th we celebrated the official launch of the Beyond 3:30 program, a unique partnership between the Toronto District School Board’s Model Schools for Inner Cities initiative, the Toronto Community Foundation, and the Toronto Foundation for Student Success and existing local organizations, which promises to “fill the gap” that is left at the end of the school day, between the hours of 3:30-8:00 p.m., when many children in our inner city “at risk” communities have nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Tasty idea to keep kids off the streets. Toronto Star, November 17th, 2009.

Interview with Rahul K. Bhardwaj, President & CEO - TCF
Metro Morning - CBC Radio, November 17th, 2009.

Program keeps kids busy after school. InsideToronto.com, November 18th, 2009.

Junior Chefs Club at Joseph Brant Sr PS. CBC Radio 1, December 1st, 2009.

Feeding Toronto's Hungry Student Week 2009

One out of three children in Toronto live in poverty and more than 90,000 Toronto District School Board students rely on breakfast, snack and lunch programs to make it through the day. The Toronto Foundation for Student Success has "kicked off" a week of events dedicated to feeding Toronto’s hungry students and hungry minds.

Education specialist Cynthia Mulligan explains how good nutrition can level the playing field inside the classroom. CityNews, October 5th.

Susan Hay profiles a program that is helping many GTA students feed their tummies and their minds. Global News, October 5th.

Program aims to feed hungry students. InsideToronto.com, September 25, 2009

Hungry Student Week is food for thought. Sun Media, October 5th.

Man pulls bus for needy kids. Sun Media, October 10th.

See how students volunteered at our TTC Take Over event.
Broadview Station, October 8th.

Check Conor Kelly's pictures from the Bus Pull.
Dundas Square, October 10th.

Feeding the Children. Toronto Sun Special Report:

T.O. school breakfast programs suffering from growing demands, funding contraints. Click here to view the May 31, 2009 article reprinted from the Toronto Star.

Sun Life Financial: Investing in a Healthier Future

Sun Life Financial is making a major investment in our future by helping high schools in the Toronto and Waterloo regions promote healthier lifestyles to their students. Sun Life’s “Investing In Our Future” program provides funding to individual high schools for a wide variety of health, nutrition and fitness-based programs. The program is targeted at 148 schools and will benefit a large percentage of Ontario students. For more information on the program visit the “Investing In Our Future” page.

Toronto Schools' Breakfast Program Cash Crunch Documented in The StarClick here to view the January 9 article reprinted from The Toronto Star

Nutrition From The Ground Up … Up and Running!

In response to concerns expressed by international health organizations regarding childhood obesity, the Toronto District School Board is introducing Nutrition From The Ground Up. The program, with start-up funding provided by the government, will see schools create and nurture community gardens on their property. The food provided from these gardens will be harvested and prepared for communal dining on school property. In addition to providing healthy food items for the students, the program will provide education on healthy diets and lifestyles.The TDSB and TFSS have initiated community gardens where Toronto students will have the opportunity to grow, nurture, harvest, help prepare and serve foods. The program entitled The Foundations for Healthy Families: Community Nutrition from the Ground Up, provides a tremendous learning experience for the students. For more details click here.

Feeding Our Future Children’s
Breakfast Program
Toronto Real Estate Board's
Adopt A School Program

For details, click on the links below.Toronto Star - Nov. 5CityNews Media Release Click here to watch Breakfast Television's features on the Adopt A School program.

Feeding Hungry Students Week Is Big News!

Jarvis CI students help fight student hunger Click Here Click Here to view the North York Mirror's article on student hunger

Click here to view the Toronto Star article : October 7Click here to view the Toronto Star's Letter to The Editor, Oct. 9

Feeding Hungry Student's Week Hits The Airwaves

Andy Barrie of CBC's Metro Morning radio show helped kick off Feeding Hungry Student's Week with an interview of Karen Falconer, Superintendent with the TDSB and Gorick Ng, a grade 11 student at Marc Garneau Collegiate and an Ambassador for the Toronto Foundation For Student Success. Click here to listen to the interview.

Students Get Chance To Tell Their Story Through Film

The “Shoot With This” Film Mentorship Project (SWT) is a new program supported by the TFSS that introduces and teaches movie production skills to at-risk students while providing them with a valuable and badly needed outlet for creative expression.

The SWT mentoring collective includes social workers, actors, playwrights, directors, screen writers and artists. They will work closely with 20 Jane-Finch youth between the ages of 15 and 20, giving them the resources and support to write, direct, produce, act in and create their own movies.

This unique program will ultimately provide young people with the opportunity to tell their stories through their eyes, with their vision, their words and their images.

For more information, visit www.shootwiththis.com

Globe & Mail Columnist Calls for Support

In A plea from Toronto's poorest schools: Feed our children recently published in the Globe and Mail, well-known Toronto journalist Christie Blatchford writes about the critical role a full belly plays in helping children and youth succeed in school, and encourages readers to remember the hungry children in our own city by making a donation to the Toronto Foundation for Student Success (TFSS). An arms-length charitable foundation of the Toronto District School Board, TFSS works very hard to fill those empty bellies. But funding dollars fall woefully short, especially for older students. “The school board has long provided a breakfast program in many of Toronto's elementary schools, and in some middle schools,” writes Blatchford, “but never run one in a high school.” Catherine Moraes, TFSS Executive Director, is quoted as ruefully pointing out that, "The older ones aren't quite as cute,” and that funding from the city drops sharply when it comes to feeding adolescents. But the hunger in high schools is just as great. Catherine explains that with support from the City, TFSS is able to reach a good number of the 36 percent of elementary students we know live in poverty. But that number drops to only 5 percent of needy students at the secondary level.
The depth of need really hit home for NW Superintendent of Schools Karen Falconer, Blatchford goes on to write. Karen arrived in February, in the wake of the School Community Safety Advisory Panel Report into issues that led to the death of C.W. Jefferys student Jordan Manners last May, and took on responsibility for some of TDSB’s most challenged schools in the Jane-Finch neighbourhood. Karen tells Blatchford she was completely shocked by the level of need. “In her time as a teacher and principal at several schools across the city, Karen had often "found pockets of need," but never such a gaping maw of it.” That is about to change for the 6000 students in that community who will soon be part of a new program, Feeding Our Future. That's a very good thing, according to Westview Centennial student council president Ratharam Sivagnanam, who knows that hunger is a real problem for youth in his community. In fact, he tells Blatchford, he 'has a friend who eats so infrequently that ... he doesn't feel the effects, he's used to it.'"

Blatchford writes that the project “gives those who were stricken by Jordan's death and the unsolicited peek into city schools it inadvertently offered a chance to do something concrete.” But, “The project needs $400,000 a year, and Karen Falconer hopes for significant corporate donations (Cereal companies? Pro sports teams?) that will provide consistent funding and alleviate the need for her and board staff to scramble every year to keep the thing going.”
Blatchford adds that $10 a month buys a healthy breakfast for 10 students. She invites readers to make a donation on-line at www.studentsuccess.ca.

Bertelsmann Foundation Honours TDSB

The Toronto District School Board has won the prestigious Carl Bertelsmann Prize for 2008 for its commitment to equity in education. The Bertelsmann Foundation, an international organization based in Germany, selects one school board world-wide each year as recipient of its honour, which includes a $235,500 cash award. The Foundation cited a number of TDSB initiatives targeting immigrant and at-risk youth in selecting the board, including the Model Schools Initiative, the planned Africentric Alternative School, heritage language courses and free parenting centres.