Elementary students help the less fortunate say HELLO to their families over the holidays

Project HELLO, an initiative by Director of Instruction Kristi Blakeway, helps the less fortunate connect with their families over the holidays with student-designed holiday cards. The project has been running for 15 years and has sent more than 1,000 cards, reaching relatives in numerous parts of Canada, the United States and Europe.

The holidays can be a hard time for those who live on the street, but a project new to Surrey Schools is helping students connect people without homes with their families this season.

This winter, several classes from Edgewood and Sunnyside elementary schools participated in Project HELLO (Helping Everyone Locate Loved Ones), an initiative by Director of Instruction Kristi Blakeway that helps the unhoused in the Downtown Eastside send student-made holiday cards to their families, relatives and friends. For the past 15 years, Blakeway has enlisted students to design and occasionally distribute cards for the less fortunate to get in touch with their loved ones.

“It started when I was teaching in Coquitlam – it was supposed to be for one day, but as soon as we started taking cards to the streets and people started writing messages, it just became an ongoing thing,” said Blakeway, Director of Instruction with Building Professional Capacity. “When I started with Surrey Schools, I was excited that Student Voice was part of my portfolio – I still get to connect with our leadership students and students at all our schools.”

For its Surrey debut, Blakeway presented Project HELLO to Grade 5-7 Edgewood students and Grade 6-7 Sunnyside students, inviting them to be part of the project. The elementary students created the cards while Blakeway, joined by district staff and their families, went into Vancouver to find people who would like to reach out to their families.

“The kids design the cards, the people we meet write the messages inside, and then we write down who we’re looking for and start searching,” said Blakeway. “Once we find a family, we phone first and make sure it’s them so they know it’s coming and mail it out.”

When Blakeway started Project HELLO in 2009, she said the original idea was to give food and clothing to homeless people, until she found out many other groups and organizations do just that over the holidays. To give something different, she came up with the creative alternative of holiday cards, which has proven to be quite meaningful in filling the emotional needs of those on the street.

“There are your basic human needs for survival, and then there’s that emotional need, and quite often that is the void in that neighbourhood,” she said. “There is so much disconnect from families, and almost everyone we meet has endured some sort of trauma. And even though there are many agencies there, there still seems to be some unmet needs when you talk about the pain they’re experiencing. Access to counselling is difficult for them.”

To date, Project HELLO has sent more than 1,000 cards to families across Canada, throughout the United States and even parts of Europe. In its first year, one card reached a family in Hawaii, prompting a call from the state’s governor asking if they could borrow her idea for a spinoff project on Mother’s Day. Since then, it’s inspired Blakeway to host the project on Mother’s Day and to start Beyond HELLO, a monthly initiative where she takes someone living on the street out to lunch to hear their story and share it.

Blakeway said the impact and reach of Project HELLO is still astounding to her.

“One of the students involved in the first year ended up winning a pretty big scholarship and she was invited to New York to speak about the work,” recalled Blakeway. “Nelson Mandela’s grandson was also there to speak to the students and he had heard her bio, and the next thing you know, she sends me this recording where he’s thanking her for the project and saying he’s going to share it with his grandpa.

“It was like, ‘What? Our little field trip is going to be shared with Nelson Mandela?’ It’s had some really amazing reach. But famous people aside, it’s been more about the connections with families.”

Blakeway said it’s been a rewarding experience to connect those who are unhoused with their families, some of whom didn’t realize their loved one was still alive and are overjoyed just to hear from them.

Additionally, she said Surrey and White Rock students have really taken to the project and are already excited to participate again in it in 2024.

“The students have been incredibly thoughtful and wanting to help,” she said. “A number of them have asked questions around how they can help the community. They lean in with curiosity and compassion, and some asked if they could help distribute cards when they’re in secondary school. They’re really engaged.”