Thank you, Caleb!

I’ve know the Yu/Lyons family since 2002 when I first went to work at UBC Athletics. The second oldest son, Jordan (aka JY) was playing on the basketball team and his siblings were at all of his games. Their parents would make it trips down from Prince George and I got to get to know them as well! Reena (oldest sister) and Matt had a newborn, Caleb who I’ve watched grow, run around War Memorial Gym and become a great big brother to Mataya and Olivia.

When I got the opportunity to partner with UBC to raise money for the orphanage, Reena came up to me to say that Caleb had decided that his 9^th birthday this year was going to be used as an opportunity to raise money for Haiti! Here is the story told by Reena (his mother).

After the earthquake we had spent a lot of time watching the news and explaining to the kids what was happening in the rest of the world. Caleb seemed especially concerned about the segments that involved children and was asking a lot of questions about what was happening to those kids. When Matt was younger he used to donate his gifts to other various charities and had talked to the kids about that before. Caleb came home from school really excited about what the school was doing for Haiti so when we started brain-storming ideas with Caleb for his party the idea of having a fundraiser came up. We made it clear to him that this was his party and his choice and he could choose if he would like to a party (with presents) and invite his friends to go to the Planetarium or Granville Island kids market or he could invite his class to our neighborhood for a fundraiser for Haiti and donate his gifts - without hesitation he decided to donate to children in Haiti. To be honest, I wondered if when the party came around he would feel sad about not getting any presents but I was really proud of him as there was never a single moment that he mentioned gifts - he was just really excited to raise the money.

Caleb raised $205!! He is an amazing young boy from an awesome family! I’m so fortunate to know them!