Winter 2024 | Heartspark

Winter 2024 is off to a loving start with some quality time with Mrs Pudding, our resident therapy dog.

Tonight's session was extra special because Kinette Club of Fort McMurray gave us a very generous donation!
This funding will ensure the friendships created in our programming can continue to grow. The more caring, compassionate and kind people there are in the world, the better.
We are truly grateful to those community members who have put their trust and belief into what we're doing.
Every session shows this mental health and friendship programming is teaching our future leaders and helpers that it's OK to be who we are and that we have value and a place at the table.

Some of our HeartSpark participants are excited to give back in the community and we decided to create HeartSpark Volunteers! Our first outing was at the Fort McMurray Royal Canadian Legion this weekend. We had a tour of all the interesting artifacts and remnants of battles fought. Then we helped make decorations and had a visit with two very special dogs named Trooper and Ray.

HeartSpark goes wherever I go, so when I was in Hawaii last week I made sure to bring some aloha back with me. This week we got to use our Aloha workbooks to learn about Hawaiian culture, loving the land, some cool words and their many meanings and more. We tasted dried tropical fruits and listened to Hawaiian radio.

This week we have the pleasure of having Cst. Perry visit us. We talked about what makes a good friendship and what can be a sign of a someone we need to think twice about. We talked about some serious topics for kids today - internet safety, sexploitation (a predator procuring images/video to blackmail and manipulate), who we can go to for help and all the things in between. We did have fun conversation too and lightened the night with some mini cupcakes and our attempts to take a photo where we were all looking at the camera and this is the result!