Students raise $255,000 for Team Addy, Guelph Wish, UGDSB

GUELPH – A group of 57 high school students had six weeks to organize a gala, with the hopes of raising $200,000.

They knocked that ambitious goal out of the park on Jan. 17, collecting more than a quarter of a million dollars to split between Team Addy, the Guelph Wish Fund for Children and experiential learning programs at the Upper Grand District School Board (UGDSB). 

Grade 12 students in the Beyond Borders program organize a charity gala at the River Run Centre in Guelph every year, and the amount raised keeps swelling. 

The gala includes food, an auction, a 50/50 draw and an evening of performances. 

Country musician Alexa Goldie flew in from Nashville this year and other musicians included Lauren Hill from Elora, Bradley Hale from Elmira and I, the Mountain from Kitchener.

Gala emcee and Elora resident Zahra Dumbreck  told the Advertiser it felt good to be able to give back to foundations that are important to her peers in the program. 

Team Addy raises money for cancer research at Sick Kids in memory of Addison Hill, an Elora teen who died of sarcoma cancer in 2022. 

Addy would have been in Grade 12 this year.

Beyond Borders student Macey Vanostyn was close friends with Addy, and wanted to show respect for her family by supporting the foundation, Dumbreck said. 

Addy’s mom, Jessica Hill, said “it was so incredibly generous of [Vanostyn] to think of our charity and bring that forward.” She praised all of the students for their “relentless determination.”

Hill noted she had goosebumps when students announced the grand total raised at the end of the gala: “Everyone jumped to their feet … I’ll never forget that for the rest of my life.” 

“To organize a gala of this scale in just six weeks takes a lot of commitment and heart,” Hill said, and it demonstrates “what the next generation can achieve.

“I know first hand what it takes to put on events. To do that in six weeks is admirable.”  

Hill explained Team Addy directs all its funds to Sick Kids oncologist and University of Toronto paediatrics and medical biophysics professor Dr. David Malkin. 

Hill is also the executive director of the Guelph Wish Fund for Children, which supports Guelph and Wellington County kids and teens facing significant illness, life-altering injury and rare and debilitating syndromes. 

The wish fund was selected because Noah Kranjec, a student in the program, received support from the foundation.   

“He beat Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2024 and we granted him and the family a cruise to celebrate,” Hill said. 

Vanostyn and Kranjec went on stage during the gala to highlight the impact each foundation makes.

The wish fund helps pay for medical equipment and hospital expenses as well as a range of children’s wishes. 

“We just want to put a smile on the child’s face to grant more joy in their lives and a little bit of respite for the family,” Hill said. 

She expressed deep appreciation for the gala sponsors, auction donors and ticket-buyers: “on behalf of both charities, we are very grateful.”  

Dumbreck said the biggest challenge in organizing the gala was all the rejections, as her role involved cold calling businesses to ask for support. But those rejections made each successful phone call feel great, she said. 

Dumbreck credits the gala’s success to the students’ personal connections to the foundations. 

“Whenever you have something near and dear to you … it makes that drive so much more personal to want to reach that goal,” she said. 

Beyond Borders is a semester-long program that includes business, math, global development and sustainability. 

Dumbreck emphasized the value of the firsthand experiences shared by Beyond Borders students, with trips to Ottawa and Toronto to visit businesses and see how they run, including Blue Jays managing and marketing at the Rogers Centre. 

There is a family dynamic between the students, she said, and she considers her peers in the program her closest friends. 

“Something that astronomically helped me is how invested our three teachers are, not only in the program but in every single student individually,” she said. 

This dedication pushes the students forward, she added, noting, “I’ve never seen myself so academically driven.” 

Program teacher Mike Parsons said the students went through “all sorts of leadership development” since September in preparation for organizing the gala, which he called an opportunity to showcase what youth leaders are capable of. 

“They worked incredibly hard to raise this – I am certainly so proud of them,” he said. 

Parsons said part of the gala’s impact is how  the students’ achievement inspires guests and the sense of accomplishment it gives the teens, which he hopes they carry within them “so they keep working hard and success will follow.”  

Parsons told the Advertiser 25 per cent of the total raised at the gala goes to Team Addy, 25% to Guelph Wish and 50% to UGDSB experiential learning programs. 

Previously, the full UGDSB portion has gone back into the Beyond Borders program, but this year it will support other programs, including the Community Environmental Leadership Program (CELP), this year because the total amount raised is so high and “cost has been a big barrier” for CELP, Parsons said.