Gursher Singh wanted to do something special for the community this year on his birthday. It does take a lot of courage for a 12-year-old to put his entire gift money received from friends and relatives to help his community. Very soon he realizes that his entire gift money of $300 is a good start but not enough and he needs to come up with better ideas to make it bigger. He thought of raising some more by doing a bottle drive and collected recycling from various kind donors of our community. He also thought of going to Ross Street Gurudwara (Sikh Temple) on a Sunday morning to raise more money to help the food bank. He got lucky to meet our Honourable Defense minister Mr. Harjit Sajjan at the Gurudwara and got words of encouragement to carry on from here and never stop this noble cause. He also met Honourable Mayor Malcolm Brodie to present the cheque for the food bank. He got more motivation from this meeting as Mr. Brodie told him that he is proud of this little volunteer. Its amazing how words of encouragement can make you more focussed on the cause as this happened with Gursher at an early and tender age of 8 when he did a fund raiser to raise money for his school playground at Whiteside Elementary and raised the highest amount by selling raffle tickets every evening for 3 weeks. He wanted his school to have a playground. He was recognized for his hard work by his teachers and Principal. Those words of encouragement he received that day motivated him to move on to his next projects of doing a lemonade stand, toy drive for Christmas. Now he wants to do this regularly to keep doing this noble cause and also motivate other youngsters and peers to build a strong volunteer force.
