The 2017–2018 Aeroplan campaign allowed us to collect enough Aeroplan Miles to help two students with their overseas travel.

Thanks to donations of Aeroplan Miles, Ouatina Bamba of the Faculty of Education left for Cote d’Ivoire this summer to take part in an educational and tutoring project for children aged 6 to 16 from disadvantaged backgrounds in the working-class and poor neighbourhoods of Abidjan. He provided support to a local organization, GEEAD-CI [TR: Student Group of the Assemblies of GOD of Côte d’Ivoire], which holds remedial and upgrading courses during school holidays and examination periods. The goal of these courses was to halt the current trend of youth dropping out of school early, improve students’ academic performance and combat delinquency among youth.

Brigitte Lefebvre, a first-year student in the Honours BSc in Biomedical Sciences program, went to Togo this summer with the other members of the Gees-Gees women’s basketball team with Basket-Plus, a Canadian non-profit organization that provides Canadian sports teams with opportunities to get involved in the community. At the beginning of the 2017–2018 basketball season, Basket-Plus and the women’s basketball team launched a fundraising campaign with the goal of raising $12,000 to build a basketball court in a village in Togo. Brigitte, who has been involved in each of the fundraising activities in the campaign, and the other members of the women’s team inaugurated the new basketball court and held clinics with the Togolese youth in the local organization’s programs. The new court will also be home to an annual basketball tournament.

We would also like to thank our ambassadors of the 2017-2018 Aeroplan campaign, Pierre Dion and Catherine Martin.

If you’d like to donate your Aeroplan Miles, you don’t have to wait for our campaign—you can donate them any time!