Helping the less fortunate

Dennis Franklin Cromarty First Nations High School’s Dakota Meekis wants to help Shelterhouse Thunder Bay clients more often than the school’s current once-a-month volunteer effort.
“I just started thinking about the workers who work here,” said the Grade 12 student from Sandy Lake while helping serve dinner on Oct. 4 in the Shelterhouse kitchen. “I’m thinking that they need more help for doing what they do. I would love help, so I might as well give them help.”
DFC students have been helping serve dinner at Shelterhouse on the first Thursday of every month since the beginning of the 2011/2012 school year.
“I like working here,” Meekis said. “I don’t want to focus on where they come from; they came in to eat, right.”
Meekis is planning to put up posters around DFC to find out who else would be interested in helping out more often at Shelterhouse.
“I would just try to get people who want to do the same thing,” Meekis said. “Right now I’ve asked a few of my friends.”
About eight to nine DFC students have helped serve dinner twice so far this school year at Shelterhouse.
“This is our way of giving back to the community — helping out and giving the students that experience to show them a different part of life,” said Lyle Fox, prime worker at DFC and one of the DFC helpers on Oct. 4. “A couple of students want to do it more often. They are willing to start up a group and do it maybe once a week or once every two weeks.”
Fox said many DFC students are grateful for what they do have after volunteering to help people in need at Shelterhouse.
“There’s a lot of different people coming in looking for meals,” Fox said. “It’s a different group even from the last time we did this. There’s maybe one or two that I recognize.”
The DFC students usually work in two shifts to serve dinner and clean up.
“It’s a way for DFC to give back to Thunder Bay,” said DFC principal Jonathan Kakegamic. “We want this school to be part of the community and I’m really proud that we are part of this. We even see a lot of our own people here (at Shelterhouse).”
Thunder Bay Police Services Constable John Walmark said recent DFC alumni have also been helping serve dinner along with the students.
“It’s a great opportunity to develop leadership skills among the students,” Walmark said. “It’s also a time to help mentor them and spend some time with them outside regular (school) hours so they can see that besides being a police officer, they also see (me) as being involved and giving to the community in other ways too.”