‘Important:’ teen mom shines light on Giving Tuesday

For the second year in a row, the Regina Police Service has partnered with the Sherwood Co-op on Giving Tuesday to support Family Services Regina(FSR). Specifically, the money raised will go to help the teen parenting program.

“It’s very important to me,” said Taye Starr-Bellegarde as she responded to how FSR has helped her in the past year.

Starr-Bellegarde had her baby girl Avilla when she was just 16-years-old. The now 17-year-old said the fact that she was able to contact people at the Shirley Schneider Support Centre helped a lot.

“They’re just really supportive, like they believe in us and encourage us and they never make us feel less than anybody else,” she said.

The teen mom also pointed out that moving to Regina from the Star Blanket First Nation, located near Balcarres was beneficial as she felt there was no one who she could relate to back home.

“I was planning to take a year off school,” she said adding that she didn’t think she would have graduated high school if it wasn’t for the support of FSR and their programs.

Now, the 17-year-old is planning to graduate from high school at Balfour Collegiate and plans to take nursing at the University of Regina in the fall.

Social media fundraising campaign

For every post/tweet with the hashtags #GivingTuesdayCA and #Unselfie – Sherwood Co-op will donate $1 for every repost/retweet – up to $3,000.

“Last year it went really well,” said Shellie Pociuk, CEO of Family Services Regina. “We raised funds that went to our teen parent program in terms of helping raise (money for) some essential needs that a lot of us take for granted, especially this time of year. So it gave (the moms) a little bit of a cushion so they could focus on some fun Christmas things and so we could supply them with some day to day necessities.”

Giving Tuesday started in Canada back in 2012. The global movement is to give back to the community after supporting the economy over the previous weekend with Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Here in the Queen city, there are 604 campaigns for people to donate too on Tuesday.

—With files from 980 CJME’s Jessie Anton