Dilico Children's Foundation formed

For years organizers at Dilico Children’s Services held bake sales to help cover the costs of putting the Anishinabek children under their care into hockey and soccer and to reward them for staying in school.

Though they scrambled to find the cash, it sufficed for more than a decade. Today, however, the need is too great, the demand too strong and the problem couldn’t be ignored any longer.
On Thursday a new fundraising effort was announced, with a $10,000 donation from TD Bank Financial Group that kick-started the Dilico Children’s Foundation.

It’s an idea whose time has come, said Don Auger, executive director of the Dilico Anishinabek Family Care.

“There are more children in aboriginal communities who use to go to school, but who can’t because they can’t afford it,” Auger said.

Take the stay-in-school reward program, he pointed out. Dilico children were given small monetary tokens, in the $25 to $50 range, for earning credits and staying in school.
“All of those milestones we had a certain amount of money we gave them because it encouraged them to stay in school,” Auger said.

While $50 might not seem like a lot of money, to kids with virtually nothing it seems like a fortune.

“To those kids, a Grade 8 child, it means a whole lot more.”

The foundation is meant to cover the stuff that slips through the cracks not covered by funding from the provincial and federal governments. Initiatives include everything from education scholarships and bursaries and summer camps to sports teams’ fees and recreational equipment.

“The government programs fund the basic necessities of life,” Auger said, “and that’s about it. So we need to find other sources of funding to provide children with the opportunity to go into sports programs, to go into cultural program and to further their education.”

The foundation board will turn to community donors, set up giving funds and then determine worthy recipient children and families.

Chief Roy Michano of Pic River First Nation said it’s time that Aboriginal children are put front and centre, a practice that has been neglected in recent years. It’s also a chance to heal, he said.

“What’s going on today is another extension of the Dilico commitment to look more seriously at the child and creating that concept of the family concept. It’s not with the direct parent, but with the extended family,” Michano said.

Warren Deaberg, relationship manager with the TD Bank Financial Group, said the foundation is a natural fit for the philanthropic arm of the multinational company.

“One of our top priorities for our charitable giving is children – children’s health, literacy, education – and investing in our communities,” Seaberg said. “This is very community-driven. There’s a lot of kids in the North and in the Thunder Bay region. And the purpose of the foundation fits perfectly with the core values of investing in kids and those key aspects of education and health.”

To learn more, visit www.dilicochildrensfoundation.com.