A messge from the Youth Outreach Team leader at Citadel High School:

This year was Citadels first year involved with War Child, personally I think it’s amazing what the group has accomplished and started from the ground up. What started as a War Child group of fewer than 10 people grew over the year to 20 dedicated high school students wanting to make a difference in the lives of war affected children. The life lessons about planning and organizing an event like this I’m sure will stick with us for the rest of our lives.

We kicked off our War Child Citadel début with a holiday bake sale that raised $200 (which was the total cost of putting on our event in March). Everyone involved stationed ourselves outside the cafeteria, blasting music and selling our baked goods. We had posters and signs up as well, and it got people talking – some even joined our group!

Once we finalized the date for the event we started planning vigorously. We handed out letters to businesses in the community and received a very positive response with various levels of sponsorship. We started off as one big group making all the decisions together, once the event go closer though we broke off into three different planning groups.

The food group was in charge of the canteen; they handed out letters to local grocery and pizza stores and figured out what they wanted at the canteen. Everyone pitched in by making some goodies at home; combined with our pizza and donated food we had quite a selection! The decorations team was in charge of making posters, getting balloons & streamers, making a money-o-meter, and planning prizes for events. The activities team was in charge of planning our different activities and how everything would work out. They planned how our Twister tournament, carnival games, Ga-Ga Ball game and Jeopardy trivia would run.

The final outcome of our 6 hour marathon March 7th, 2009 looked like this… for the first hour we relaxed until everything got started with a DJ playing. We started the night with two presentations. After that we had a low key performance by a local band ‘Mir’. We then set up the Jeopardy game based on War Child programs / music / world conflicts / and other random categories. The rest of the night was spent playing carnival games, Twister, a Ga-Ga Ball tournament and listening to our other band Chris Martin and the Trouble Shooters. The night ended with a local radio station coming in to DJ a dance.

For a student population of 1,400 I was initially disappointed with our turn out of approximately 80 students. When the night was over though, I realized that everyone who was there had a blast- which is what counts. Our final total for the event was $6600, through pledges, donations and ticket sales, which we all think is amazing!

The response I got from the rest of the group was that everyone really enjoyed putting this event on and they definitely want to continue what we think should be a tradition at Citadel. War Child will now be a huge part of Citadel, thanks to all the help and support from the War Child office, the school and the community!

Thank you for making this possible and helping Citadel see the awesomeness that is War Child Canada!

Alana Martin
Senior Student Organizer