Your Name Could Change the Life of a Young Girl Forever

Endowment For Leadership: Why our future depends on it.

By Meredith Thompson

Arnold and Lynn Irwin, current BSS grandparents and past parents cheer on their granddaughter every chance they get. Standing on the field and watching their granddaughter,

we talked about why it’s so important to their family to give back to the school. “The education at BSS is marvelous - it is a school that really cares about every student. I wanted to say ‘thank you’ to BSS for what it has done for my daughter and granddaughters. It was important to us to do something that would assist girls and provide the kind of experience my family has had and so we created the Irwin Family Bursary.”

At BSS, endowed family funds are a fundamental part of the endowment fund. The current
BSS endowment fund stands at $14 million dollars which translates into $454,000 dispersed to outstanding young ladies next school year. Last year, the BSS Foundation awarded sixty-five scholarships and bursaries to qualified, bright and deserving girls through named family funds, like the Irwin Family Bursary. An initial donation creates a sum of money in the fund, the interest from which is dispersed each year according to criteria established by the donor and BSS. The principal remains untouched and every year, money is generated that can go toward a bursary or scholarship.

Endowed family funds establish a lasting legacy for the donor family and assist exceptional young women to come to BSS. Donors such as the Irwin Family direct their bursary to provide assistance to deserving girls who would otherwise not be able to attend BSS due to personal financial limitations. Other named funds have been created for memorial, tribute or class gifts.

For example, the Class of 1992 wanted to honour their beloved teacher, Helen Little Strasser, so on graduating they established the Helen Little Strasser Bursary. “I am honoured to have a bursary in my name. Having taught for 38 years at BSS, it is wonderful to have a lasting memory of my years there. I feel that since the interest from this fund is being giving to a deserving pupil that I am still helping a student,” says Helen Little Strasser. This year, the Class of 1967 directed the funds raised in honour of their reunion to the Helen Little Strasser Bursary and through this kind of generosity, the fund continues to grow, year in and year out.

As we look to the future, we see a demographic shift that demands our attention and preparation. In the last fifty years, the number of births per thousand people has gone from twenty-eight to eleven. As the number of births has dropped, we see over 250 000 people immigrate to Canada each year and 43 per cent of them come to Toronto. By 2020, the year our current Senior Kindergarten class will graduate, the population of Toronto will balloon from five to seven million, largely from immigration. The world is changing and we must be prepared. Among these new Canadians are tomorrow’s BSSers—a diverse, talented, fascinating part of our growing community who might not have the ready financial means to attend BSS, but are deserving, outstanding students that we need to bring into our community.

How is BSS preparing for the future? The answer is our Endowment For Leadership. The creation of a named fund, is one of many ways that donors can show their support for their girls and for BSS. The BSS Endowment For Leadership is about ensuring BSS’s future. It is about bringing the best people - faculty, staff, and students to BSS. And, it is about the creation and maintenance of the absolute best educational program.

For the next 140 years and beyond, we will need the support of the BSS community for the Endowment For Leadership. “We believe in BSS,” say Agnes and John Yuen, past parents and donors of The Agnes Yuen Bursary. “We believe each generation should leave a legacy for the generations to follow,” says John Yuen who chose to name the fund after his wife to honour her continued dedication to their two children. “We choose to direct the funds towards helping to bring great girls, irrespective of their financial situation, to BSS. When people think of BSS, they should not think of one socio-economic situation but of all-round education and leadership. We are happy and proud BSS supporters.”

If you have questions about establishing a named family fund, or any other Advancement Office initiatives, please contact Roger Ali, Executive Director of Advancement, at rali@bss.on.ca or 416-484-4707.

Some of our fully-dispersing named bursaries
With thanks to the generosity of members of the BSS community

The Arrell Family Bursary
The Cheuk Family Bursary
The Flynn Family Bursary
The Nicola GALLOWAY ’85 Memorial Bursary
The Donald F. Hunter
Charitable Foundation Bursary
The Irwin Family Bursary
The Barbara JONES ’39
Bursary Fund
The Renata KIERANS’87 and
Julia KIERANS ’89 Bursary
The H.P. Lam Bursary
The Katharine Lamont Bursary
The Twenty-first Century Scholarship
The Ottilie SCHREIBER
Mason ’10 Memorial Bursary
The David McMaster
Memorial Bursary
The Helen GARDINER Phelan ’36 Twenty-First Century Bursary
The Helen Little Strasser Bursary
The Isabella GORDON
Wright ’28 Bursary
The Agnes Yuen Bursary

BSS bursaries extend across the globe

“BSS provided a phenomenal foundation. I transitioned to UCLA effortlessly and then on to Cornell Law School. The academic discipline, the emphasis on critical thinking and the fostering of a desire to learn became life-long enjoyable and rewarding habits.”
—Pilar PARDUCCI ’85, bursary recipient, is a graduate of UCLA and Cornell University
Law School and former editor of the Cornell Law Review. Her education has led her to a successful career in corporate law at both an international law firm and a software company in the US.

“BSS developed my self-confidence, encouraged and enabled me to take on leadership roles—first at BSS and later in voluntary community work and diverse employment
situations in Canada and overseas. Both BSS teachers and student leaders challenged me to be the best I could be—at school and for the rest of my life.”
—Sydney MACHELL Woollcombe ’54, bursary recipient, volunteer probation officer dealing with youth and a policy analyst with the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services. As a CUSO volunteer in Nigeria, Sydney developed and led a community initiative that provided health education to primary school teachers and health workers in local rural and community health centres.

“I think fondly of my time training and competing in sports at BSS—from soccer to swimming to badminton. I treasure my year as Games Captain and the friendships, responsibility and challenges I felt as a prefect. Overwhelmingly, what I think about is the friendships and all of the extra-curricular activities—from sports to debating to theatre. Those are what I feel that I grew through—and what helped me to grow up”
—Jennifer WOOLLCOMBE ’85, bursary recipient, is a graduate of Queen’s University. She continued her education at McGill where she received a joint LL.B and B.C.L. She has appeared in all levels of court in Ontario as well as in the Supreme Court of Canada. (Jennifer’s mother is Sydney MACHELL Woollcombe ’54 who also submitted a quotation; both Jennifer’s grandmother and her great-grandmother are BSS Old Girls.)

“BSS instilled the knowledge, drive, and discipline that it takes to be successful in whatever pursuit I’ve undertaken. BSS taught me that ‘no’, ‘never’, and ‘impossible’ is not an acceptable option.”
—Areta KOMARNICKY Lloyd ’87, bursary recipient, has a Master’s of Arts in Journalism from Northeastern University. After spending several years as an on-air reporter, she built a successful career in public relations and marketing in Toronto, Kuala Lumpur and New York in the fields of press freedom, human rights and social welfare.

 


Posted January 07, 2008 at 02:23pm






LEAVE A COMMENT






send this page to a friend   print this page