The Oxfam Club at école Secondaire Sainte Marguerite d'Youville is a group of 20 dedicated socially conscious students. They care so much about people in the conflicted region of Darfur in Sudan they just want to dance all night long.
After school on Friday they will be getting decked out in their most nostalgic gear from the 1980s. Their mission is to take to the dance floor from 5:30 p.m. until the stroke of midnight. The six-and-a-half hour marathon is the school's third annual dance-a-thon, a yearly event held to raise money and awareness but also to stamp out genocide from the planet.
Club founder and dance enthusiast Madeleine Pawlowski explained there is always a need for people to be mindful of what's going on in the world.
"Oxfam is an organization that works on international development as well as aid in emergency and crisis situations," she said. "Those two issues are really important to me."
The crisis in Darfur is now in its eighth year and many relief agencies consider it to be the world's largest concentration of human suffering. Oxfam International is working to provide access to clean water, health, education, sanitation and necessities of life like blankets.
The ESSMY Oxfam Club's goal is to raise $6,000 on Friday alone. They brought in almost $8,000 from the previous two dance-a-thons.
That money has helped and Pawlowski hopes to have an update in time for Friday's event.
"We're waiting to hear back now. What we really wanted to share at the dance-a-thon is some of the progress that's been made through our work," she said, adding that working to provide sustainable agriculture to people in the affected region is difficult but necessary because the conflict doesn't seem to be abating.
You can learn more about Oxfam through www.oxfam.org.
Spring crafts help fill food bank's shelves
The first annual Spring Gift, Craft and Bake Sale is on this weekend at the St. Albert Inn. Organizer Cathy-Ann Burgardt is enthusiastic about helping to support local vendors but the event is also going to benefit city charities as well. People can bring in donations for the St. Albert Food Bank and a local Scouts chapter is doing a bottle drive as well.
This display of community goodwill is even supported by the St. Albert Chamber of Commerce. Burgardt said that the chamber would hand out leaflets for her sale during its massive Lifestyle Expo at Servus Credit Union Place starting Friday.
"It's a very good thing," she laughed, taking a line from Martha Stewart.
The show runs Friday from 4 to 8 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
