Cut down on your shopping list…

By Maddi Slaney

All for a cause

Graduates Without Borders began in November 2011 in Canada. During a French class, a book titled “Au nom de tous les homes” (In the name of mankind) was read. The book was written by a Jewish man who had lived through the holocaust and wanted to talk about the problems of the world today. The information that we learned was very shocking.





  After the class was done reading the excerpt, the teacher, Michelle Foreman, asked, “What upset you the most about this text?” Many students recalled stories from the book, but Nathaniel Carson, a student, said, “What upsets me the most is that no one is going to do anything about these atrocities.”  After class, another student, Maddi Slaney, came over to talk to Nathaniel about how right he was, and that they should do something about it. She mentioned a previous Statistics class where students talked about the cost of Prom, and how expensive it was. After lots of back and forth, Graduates Without Borders started.  

Graduates Without Borders’ mission is to get people to spend less money on themselves, and spend it trying to help someone else in need. The main focus this year is to replace corsages and boutonnieres worn at prom with $25 ribbons. We are replacing them with ribbons to show their support and provide money to help a child.

When the idea first came out to the First school, École Sainte-Anne, it was really well received. Then we moved on to the next to schools and things went so well. The support that the students gave was remarkable. The whole team was happily surprised to see how much teens in this day and age wanted to help. Graduates Without Borders hopes that this project will help empower youth to make changes in the world of tomorrow and today.

The GWB/FSF team is composed of three different schools to date, with more hoping to join soon! The École Sainte-Anne Team with Maddi Slaney, Nat Carson, Jeff Hadley, Natasha Seguin, Mathiane Vachon-Gravel, Jolaine Boucher and Caroline Forestell. The Fredericton High School Team withKatie Deveau, Olivia Graham, Molly Jackson, Rebecca Fidler, Nicola Seguin, Abbey Cain and Adam Archibald. And, the Leo Hayes High School Team with Jamie Holmes, Jamie Serano, Kelsey McDonald, Matt Stackhouse and Anna Keirstead.

So far GWB has been raising money mostly with T-shirt sales. It’s made about $1,000 to date, and plan on making most of their money based on ribbon sales. We plan on selling ribbons very soon! GWB has chosen Pratham as their charity because they are the largest non-governmental organization working to provide quality education to the underprivileged children of India. Beginning in 1994, they provide pre-school education to the children in the slums of Mumbai city. Since then, the organization has grown both in scope and geographical coverage. By using givewell.org GWB was able to choose Pratham from the best charities that there are. Pratham was ranked very high and has shown very good results. We wanted to pick a group that was trust worthy and innovative, and that’s we chose Pratham!

Maddi Slaney is Graduates Without Borders' General Manager and Co-Founder along with Nat Carson