Aunt Leah’s staff, participants, and supporters continue to share that they look forward to our Annual Youth Awards Celebration each year. We love to share our award winners and celebrate their individual achievements, stories, and success while in our programs. This year we celebrated five young people with our Leah, Rona, Jeremy Wright, Champion, and Leadership awards.

Gillian and Doug Bonn joined us at The Youth Awards Ceremony again this year. They shared their thoughts on celebrating the accomplishments of our young people.

“The awards ceremony offers a heartwarming glimpse of the true impact that Aunt Leah’s makes. We see ourselves in the young women who are building their lives and remember what it was like for us. Our gifts ground us – knowing that what we are doing is right and that our gifts make a difference. We are so glad to see them shining, feeling safe, secure and self-confident.”

We are monthly donors, but a few years ago, we inherited some property that we didn’t want to keep because it had come to us through sadness and pain. We felt that if others could benefit from it that we would gladly give it away. We chose Aunt Leah’s because of our own struggles as young people and our deep belief in investing in youth and strengthening every young person’s gifts and potential. 

We both come from families who worked hard and were deeply engaged in their communities.  We know that there are solutions to social problems if we get together and raise our voices.

Doug, a UBC professor, sees the difficulties of his students – not only with their studies but in maintaining housing and keeping themselves clothed and fed. Gillian was a single mom of two children who lost her job and survived tough times before she was able to offer a stable life to her kids.

We are grateful for the resilience we found within ourselves and see how the work that Aunt Leah’s does builds resilience in the young people they serve.