Last year, when a fire destroyed Bella Bella's only grocery store, Richmond businessman Rodger Upton organized an airlift of groceries and supplies to the remote First Nations community to tide it over, but this year his concern is a lot closer to home.
His business, Ironwood Clay Company on Jacombs Road, uses glacial oceanic clay from the Bella Bella area to manufacture cosmetic and skin care products, hence his concern for the welfare of that community.
But Mitchell elementary in northeast Richmond - a school where slightly less than half of its 300 families are living at or below the poverty line - is in his backyard.
And after seeing that the school had again applied for help from The Vancouver Sun's Adopt-A-School (AAS) campaign to keep its breakfast program operating, Upton was at the school last week to meet with principal Jason Higo and vice-principal Christine Marin to offer help.
The combination of Higo and Marin is unique.
When Higo attended Lord Byng elementary in Steveston, his Grade 1 teacher was Marin.
"She's a very special lady and I think it was having her as a teacher which convinced me to go into teaching," said Higo, who once worked as a commercial fisherman.
Upton had supported last year's Adopt-A-School campaign, but this year he offered to take on Mitchell, a school of 430 students on Cambie and No. 5 Road in an area where many families struggle economically.
The poverty shows at school when children come hungry or without a proper lunch.
"We don't ask questions about why they are hungry," said Higo, who is in his first year at the school, "we just provide the opportunity for them to get a healthy breakfast so they can start the school day with full bellies. We know this will make them better learners."
About 40 students come regularly to the Breakfast Club, which operates twice a week.
Marin said the effects of poverty were in plain sight recently when a teacher had to bring a child out of class because she couldn't keep her eyes open.
"She was sharing a bedroom with five other people and she hadn't slept. And she hadn't eaten either because by the time she got up there's five kids ahead of her and she got missed."
Higo and Marin do the shopping for the Breakfast Club and the menu is toasted cheese sandwiches, cereal, milk, fruit and fruit juice, sometimes smoothies if they have enough money.
"We do it as a buffet," said Marin. "And then we take the leftover food and put it on carts so that children who come late to school and have missed breakfast can come out of class and get something to eat."
She said they use some of the breakfast money to buy food for lunch when they find children with nothing to eat.
Due to a shortage of funds and a fear that if they expanded the breakfast program they might run out of money, the school serves breakfast only twice a week.
"Sustainability is one of our concerns but we would also need more staff volunteers if we were to expand it," said Higo.
The school had asked for $2,000 from Adopt-A-School for its Breakfast Club.
Upton said he will give $5,000 to Adopt-A-School to enable staff to increase the number of breakfast days and to provide extra funds for lunch.
He also promised to provide money for children who couldn't go on field trips because their families couldn't afford the cost and for new clothing and footwear for children in need or to relieve other problems caused by poverty.
Marin says Mitchell students are remarkably generous toward each other and when parts of the Philippines were devastated last year by a typhoon they banded together to raise $500, some asking for donations instead of birthday gifts.
"We have a Somalian refugee family, one of their little boys is in a wheelchair and incapacitated. The mother was shot 14 times while pregnant and carrying him. And all the kids in the school take care of him. They love each other and they do a wonderful job," said Marin.
"But who is looking after them really? We are. But we don't have the means to look after them."
"There have to be increases to the minimum wage and welfare," she said.
To learn more about The Vancouver Sun Children's Fund Adopt-a-School initiative, check online at vansunkidsfund.ca.
For more stories, go to vancouversun.com