Nrhs Karma Closet

Hi everyone!
My name is Penelope Brown and I am currently and grade 11 student here at NRHS. I started my karma closet journey last year and it has been such an amazing experience!

Because Elara is leaving this year, I will be taking over this facebook account and other social media’s! I can’t wait for next year and all the great things to come! 🦅

It’s that time of year! Two of our very special Karma Closet members are leaving the nest. Thank you so much for your hard work dedication to the karma closet this year, Elara Ehler and Jessica Fagan! These two nighthawks were such strong leaders at our school and will be missed so much! Jessica worked hard with planning all the great things karma closet does and making sure everything ran smoothly. Elara communicated with this online Facebook community and other social media’s, giving us all an update on what was going on and what donations were most needed. These two nighthawks were role models to not only the karma closet crew, but the whole school. It was such a great year for the karma closet and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without you. We can’t thank you two enough for everything you did for this school, we will miss you!❤️

Hello Karma Closet community!

Today was a huge milestone for us: 20,000 free meals served here at NRHS this year!! 🙌
Since September, we have been offering free and healthy school lunches to all of our students with the help of Mr. Heighton and his food technology classes. Since then, we have been able to achieve so much, and spread the positive effects of this program with the community!
We celebrated with some live music and some yummy desserts from Mary Ocelot Stewart and the Monarch Restaurant and as always, tons of food for our students. It was a wonderful way to end off our program for the year! 🦅

Hello Karma Closet Community!

We had a wonderful time at Squawk’s birthday bash last Thursday! The Karma Closet helped set up over 900 hot dog buns and four different juice jugs (in record speed😆) for the NRHS students to enjoy! 🌭
We also had the amazing Mr. Heighton serving pulled pork and beef tacos for lunch, along with some yummy bannock bread and birthday cake for squawk that our students loved! 🎂
That being said, we served every single last hot dog, and Mr. Heighton served up all of his tacos, which means this event was a success!

All of this delicious food paired with the sunny weather and fun activities made for a perfect birthday for Squawk! Caw! 🦅

Thank you Yeni Maclean and Debbie from RBC Stellarton branch for returning to our free lunch program this spring! We are so very grateful for the continued support. 🙌

Hello Karma Closet Community!

We owe a huge thank you to Jessica Fagan for receiving not one, but two new commercial grade fridges! One is located in Squawk’s cafe, and the other in our skills trade kitchen.
Another big thank you to the CEP students for helping us manoeuvre these big fridges into the school! 🚪
These big new fridges will help us with the storage and keeping of our free lunch food!

Today was like all the gift giving occasions rolled into one! We have a new fridge!!!

The staff of Squawks Cafe' would like to thank the amazing Jessica Fagan for scoring us this new beauty! Jessica has been working on this for awhile. She researched and applied for a grant; her way with words bought our school not one but two beautiful, huge and much needed commercial fridges. The other will live in the Skills Trade kitchen.

A Big thank you to our CEP Building Systems' students Nick Fraser and Garrett Manning for using their skills to get these fridges through our doors. Not an easy feat!

Pictured with Jessica is Justin Mathieson, a CEP Food Service Student.

Thank you Jessica!!! We appreciate you!!

Hello Karma Closet community! We wanted to say a big thank you to Groupe Savoie and G&R Trucking for their donation of wood chips! Compost arrived from Pictou County Solid Waste Facility! Thank you to staff Chris Duguay, Crystal Willet & Christina Cameron to help connect us to our community supporters! This will help our upcoming Food Forest project!🌲

We also wanted to say another huge thank you to Darren Webster, Darlo, and Ian from RJ MacIssac Construction Ltd. For providing us with a mixer and industrial dishwasher! This equipment would have cost us thousands of dollars. It was “Upcycled” from the recently decommissioned Coast Guard ship Hudson. Thank you for thinking of us and we can’t wait to get baking with this huge mixer! 🥗🙌

Please share!! We will be hosting our Dress Giveaway Event this Saturday, May 18th at the Trenton Park Pavillion (building behind the pool) from 12-4

Thank you to Dustin and Andrew from St. Barbara for coming to visit our lunch program this past Tuesday! We had a fantastic time!🥗

Recently, the Karma Closet attended the volunteer appreciation banquet for our volunteer service! Thank you for having us!

We also attended a Kinette meeting to share some information on our program!

🙌 Hello Karma Closet community!
A lot has happened recently, and we are so grateful to be where we are with this program! We wanted to give a few well deserved shoutouts to the following:

- Sunny Brae and St. Paul’s Ladies Aide
- Staff - Mr. Kitson, Mr. Vlasic, Ms. Hill
- United Way of Pictou County! $16,000 donation for our free Salad Bar lunch program!
- Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage for a one time Food Initiatives Grant for $35,000. We are so grateful, this will enable our program to continue until the new Universal School Lunches program policy is finalised. We understand that elementary schools are receiving this funding first, and will roll out to high schools within 4 years.
- Mary Taylor and the congregation of St. Paul United Church in Westville. Thank you for your (multiple) donations of hygiene products and snacks for students!
- Municipality of Pictou County for your recognition at the Volunteer Appreciation Banquet on April 16 and donations to the program!
- We also wanted to shout out student Issac Ryan who designed a collaboration mock-up with the agriculture class!

Thank you for all of the ongoing support! We have so much coming soon!🥗

📻 Our student leader/organizer Jessica Fagan was interviewed by Portia Clark on CBC radio this morning, getting our perspective on the Federal School Food announcement of 1 Billion dollars! Thank you CBC for having us, and great job Jessica!

NRHS Information Morning This morning, Grade 12 student and NRHS Karma Closet volunteer Jessica Fagan appeared on CBC Radio's Information Morning to talk about the federal government...

⭐️ Thank you Yeni MacLean and Linda Otter from RBC Stellarton Branch for coming to visit our Free Salad Bar Lunch line, helping clean up, and donating a generous $1500 to the program! We are looking forward to welcoming them back in May 2024. 🥗

This is a great step forward for accessible food for students! No student should have to worry about these things!
This means so much to us from the Karma Closet, and steps up to what our goal is not just for our school, but for all schools. 🙌

2nd Semester Karma Thank yous to our community! 📌
We appreciate your continued support, we couldn’t do this without you!

Sobeys employees: Holiday Acts of Kindness:Lisa Bezanson, Jane & Anthony McDow, Angela Cruickshank, Joan & Annika Dean, John MacLellan
Donation - Angela Campbell (parent)
Donation - Brent Roddick and family (Bake sale fundraiser!)
Donation - Darren Webster (RJ MacIssac Construction Ltd)
Donation - Robin Dalton and the organising committee of the Danny Dorrington Memorial Hockey Tournament (Westville)
Michelle Balcom - Balcom Family Farm! (2nd large donation of organic meat)
Donation - hygiene products and gently used coats - Val MacKenzie
Donation - Mary Lou Conway - big box of snacks and socks!
Stirlings Fresh Farm Market - weekly donation of apples
Greenhill Alma United Church congregation - January collection of snacks and cereal - thank you for inviting us to share our reflections on our work with you!
Cathy from Bramble Hill Farms - big bags of sprouts for salads
Sutherland Harris Memorial Hospital Foundation (Pictou) $5000 donation!

For folks wishing to help, here is a link for cash donations and you will be issued a receipt! Thank you for thinking of us.❤️

https://ccrce.schoolcashonline.com/Fee/Details/12790/320/False/True?fbclid=IwAR0vF2oCrl30AXxAXNPJpoI3iEPS2zHww0deUDZsFE4s9wuRZM73qm_J-bI_aem_AalNhvcS6NqBhiDSWp32_6grYr9K-Ypm3jz9a8QEo4rYVJ9Y01UUnepPO3OfTrw7tXU

We hit a massive milestone this week:

10,000 free lunches have been served!🙌

We celebrated with cake and our 10,000th student was given a plate of cookies to share around. 🎂🍪

A big thank you to everyone involved who has helped us to reach this point! Thank you to all of our community and volunteers for helping us every step of the way from donations to serving food! Thank you to our student leaders for your time and organization! And thank you Mr. Paul Heighton for cooking and working and helping to make this dream a reality and success. ⭐️

A big milestone! Thank you as well to Mr. Heighton for making this all possible. 🙌

TikTok · mrheighton 173 likes, 13 comments. “10,000 Meals”

⭐️A big Karma thank you to the Pictou Crushers Under 11 AA Team and Under 13 AAA Hockey Teams! 🏒
They held their “Crush the Halls” Food Drive fundraiser. They donated 15 bags of groceries and snacks for the Karma Closet & Free lunch program! ❤️
Squawk even came by for a visit! 🦅

Hello Karma Closet community!❄️
The holidays are just around the corner! We’d like to thank these people for helping us out these past weeks!😁

• Diane Wright - Springville Women's Institute
• Sharon St John United Church (Stellarton) donation and organizing a food collection for us
• Elizabeth MacIntosh - donation of snacks & hygiene products & Wish list shopping trip
• Anne Marie McLean & Peter Robson (Pictou) repeat donation of $500 !!!
• Michelle Balcom - Balcom Family Farm
• Kara Allen - East River Valley Community Development Association
• Dr. Heather Walker - $200 donation
• Blinkhorn’s Real Estate - $500 donation
• Joey Desmond (school liaison - Nova Scotia Works) huge grocery drop off
• Gram’s Place - donation of bread & rolls for the free student lunch program!
• NSTU Donation $150 donation
• Raphael Foundation - $700 donation- This is the second time we received this grant funding!
• Kinette Club of New Glasgow.

Below is our holiday wishlist! As always, donations can be dropped off at NRHS from 9-3pm made out to Karma Closet! Thank you!

Hi, Karma closet community! We received a note from Celina Aalders that the CBC story about the new free Salad Bar program will air tonight (Friday), and we will post a link here if you miss it! Thank you for all of your support, we appreciate it so much. 💕

⭐️A big thank you to CBC for spending the lunch hour with us yesterday! We appreciate your time and effort to share our story. The community is such an important part of our work, so sharing this is amazing! 🎥

Hello Karma Closet Community!❄️
As the weather gets cooler and you take out your warmer clothes, if you happen to have any winter jackets that don’t fit, please consider donating them to the Karma Closet!
We’re in need of men’s winter jackets for the upcoming winter season. Donations can be dropped off between 9-3 on a weekday.
Any donation is greatly appreciated!❤️

Hello Karma Closet community!
Things have been going extremely well for our new free lunch program! We have had lineups around the block every lunchtime. 🥙
⭐️ We’d like to give a few shoutouts to these amazing people for their help!
Darlene Morgan-MacDonald (grocery donation)
Lilly’s Grandmother! (Marie McCullough) Alma United Church
Susan Thompson - Holiday Inn Express Stellarton
Guest Services Manager
9027551020
Lynn Carew-Larson (donation of groceries)
Stirlings Farm Market - weekly donation of fresh apples
Week’s Construction - Norm Seymour
📌 As always, snacks get used very often at our school and we need to keep up! If you’d like to donate in any way, here are some things to keep an eye out for:
Fruit cups and applesauce, coat hangers, froot loops, sandwich bags, cereal, goldfish, granola bars, Ritz crackers, fruit, Kraft dinner cups, clementines or fresh fruit, and fruit gummies!
Donations can be dropped off at the school from 9-3.
❤️ Thank you for everything, and your support is always greatly appreciated!