The Canada West District made its annual Kids Reaching Kids fundraiser tangible through a “Lunch and Learn” event about a First Nations culture at their family camp in August. 

The Canada West District’s fundraising efforts this year supported the translation of the Journey of Grace children’s materials into other languages. During their family camp, they used the Grace character from the free Journey of Grace Vacation Bible School curriculum to portray the fundraiser’s progress.

During their annual family camp, they unveil their fundraiser and start to chip away at their goal. Children at the camp bring toy wagons and go around to campsites and sell wood, decorative rocks, even corn on the cob to raise funds. They needed to meet a goal of $2,000 to have their “Lunch and Learn” event as a prize. They met that goal, and in total they’ve now raised upwards of $4,500 for their Kids Reaching Kids project.

Since the project funds support the creation of resources for different cultures, district leaders wanted the children to learn about the denomination’s multicultural connections.

“We connected to that because of course the children are raising money for funds for a different culture, and we wanted them to experience a different culture but a culture that’s relevant to us in Canada,” said Sheri Lynn Martin, the children’s ministry coordinator for the Canada West District.

The district’s missions vice president, Penny Ure, comes from a First Nations background and has many foster children who also come from that background. The event featured traditional clothing, food, language lessons, a song, and a children’s story time. 

The book read during the story time was written about a child’s experience at an Indian Residential School. The residential schools have been at the forefront of conversations in Canada this summer following the discovery of thousands of unmarked graves at the former school sites. 

“It was a children’s book, so it’s a little bit more gentle,” Martin said. “People were just shocked at what had happened, and you could see them thinking about how things needed to change.”

Martin hopes other churches will help connect their children to the diverse nature of the Church of the Nazarene and teach them about different cultures that exist both locally and globally.
“It’s a really good connection to go from, ‘We’re trying to raise money for this translated material for the kids,’ into ‘Here’s a culture and some differences and here is why we need to help have material that fits their culture as well,’” Martin said.