Joan of Arc Academy firmly believes in the importance of educating its students about community service. Volunteering and contributing to our community is encouraged. As such, the girls are involved in numerous community outreach projects. Students from grades five to eight participate in programs for elderly and disabled persons and in programs that help other young people in Ottawa. The younger grades visit our senior neighbours at West End Villa for special holidays. These visits help our girls to learn about kindness and respect for seniors.
Girls 4 Girls
The girls have taken on projects to support community groups, including knitting scarves for the Snowsuit Fund, collecting food for the Ottawa Food Bank and bringing toys to Toy Mountain. They also participate in fundraising activities such as the Walkathon to support Project Tembo and Jump Rope for Heart to raise money for The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.
Every year our ‘Girls 4 Girls’ club organizes a major campaign to sponsor a room for a homeless girl in the Youth Services Bureaus Young Women’s Shelter. For the past few years the projects have been so impressive that they have received province wide publicity, and our students have been interviewed on television and by the press.
Frozen and Forgotten
In 2019, Joan of Arc Academy’s Girls 4 Girls organized a fundraising campaign for Ottawa’s Youth Services Bureau. The campaign launched in late February with an art installation at the school that featured pairs of jeans frozen in place to symbolize how youth homelessness in Ottawa often goes unnoticed.
The girls set out to raise $25,000 to fund a studio apartment inside the YSB’s new youth hub for one year. The hub provides a safe long-term space for young homeless people and delivers frontline medical services and on-site counselling. The school put a video online with instructions on how to freeze jeans. The girls encouraged people to put them up on their front lawn, take a picture, share it, and make donations. Local dance organization, Dandelion Dance, partnered with us and choreographed a dance to represent homeless youth and performed it around the frozen jeans. Our girls are truly passionate about making a difference!