And the winners are…

Bobby Hayes spent years digging into his own pocket to help street kids in Saint John, N.B. In 1993, he took over an abandoned church—at his own expense—and founded The Joshua Group: a safe haven where disadvantaged kids could find laughter, support, advice and food.

Its sanctuary of more than a decade was recently sold, but thanks to Champions of Change, The Joshua Group will find a new home. “The prize money will go to a permanent place for our kids,” says Hayes, “so that they will never again have to pack their toys in plastic bags and lose their home.

“Winning this award is such an honour. It puts the kids centre stage, and maybe—just maybe—their lives will get better. Kids living on the other side of the tracks will have an equal opportunity, and a better quality of life.”
Even after a decade, Hayes remembers so many of their faces: “Finding a little girl who had been traded for a car. Finding an 11-year-old girl standing in her doorway, crying, ‘It’s my birthday and no one cares.’ Finding a little boy who hadn’t eaten in three days, or an eight-year-old boy asking me if I would be his dad. [One day] a seven-year-old girl slipped me a note saying, ‘Please don’t leave me.’” It’s impossible to forget experiences like these.  And for Hayes, it was impossible to stand by and watch.

His message? “Volunteering will open your eyes as well as your heart, and give you new meaning in life.”

Bob Davisson’s Champions of Change prize money will provide 300 desperately poor Haitian children with an education for one year: “All their school books, uniforms, teachers’ salaries, clean drinking water, medicine if needed, and a hot meal each weekday,” he says. And with that education comes the possibility of a future.

Hope is in short supply in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. “Four hundred children die every day of starvation in Haiti. That 54 percent of the population has no access to clean drinking water, 49 percent are illiterate and only half of these children reach the age of 15.” Rather than find discouragement in these grim statistics, Davisson sees cause for hope. “When we completed our first school in January 2006, seeing the joy on the faces of the children…gave us the strength to push forward.”

For Davisson, volunteering is all about giving hope and strength to those who have none. “I believe we will see a huge increase in volunteerism over the next few years as the baby boomers enter retirement,” he says. “When people see those recognized for their volunteerism, like the Champions of Change, they’ll realize these are regular people just like them. It will give them the encouragement to reach out and help.”

His message? “I believe everyone has the gift of volunteerism in them, and when they find it they will experience such joy that it will impact their communities and the world. Let the gift grow in you and it spreads to others.”

- Ryan Murdock