On Nov. 28, Surrey firefighters from Hall #15 came to our class to pick up the granola bars and juice boxes that our class collected and they answered our questions about the Nutritional Snack Program they organize for school children in Surrey.

We were visited by Captain McAuley and firefighters G. Corrin, K. Berdusco and E. Dombrowski. Surrey firefighter Ernie Dombrowski told our class the wonderful story of how the Surrey Firefighters Nutritional Snack Program started. He said it started in 1994 when a group of firefighters thought about the things they could do to help the community. So they thought about starting the snack program, in which they would buy healthy snacks and then deliver them to the schools that needed the food for students who were not able to bring healthy lunches or enough food to school in their lunches.

Then they started to take a portion of their paycheques to support the program and it started to catch on and more and more firefighters became involved.

Through this amazing and very generous process, the Surrey Firefighters Nutritional Snack Program became developed, and that is why so many kids in the Surrey community have healthy snacks and lunches, thanks to the firefighters who have spent so much time in making kids smile.

We were also interested in hearing about how the community could get involved with programs and charities like the lunch program.

The firefighters told us that the people in the community could find a program

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that they are interested in and then make a connection with a family member, a friend or someone you know and tell them about what you're doing. Try to spread the word about it, so it can help inspire people to pass it on to others and to help with the program. Then eventually it could grow bigger and bigger.

Earlier this school year, our class decided to pitch in and start a "granola bar and juice box drive" in our school. We went to each class in our school and asked the children at Latimer Road to help us out. We left a large box in front of the office where collections gathered up for a couple of weeks. We were so excited to empty this box every couple of days!

Our class would like to send out a very big thank you to all of the parents and students from Latimer Road for helping us collect snacks for a very worthy cause.

Our class would also like to encourage other Surrey schools to start a collection that can be given to their local firehall as a contribution to the snack program. Our class felt really good about helping out and we know you will too!