ATHABASCA – At the start of the pandemic in March, Whispering Hills Primary School teacher Janaya Reimer handed out over 100 food bags and now she has been selected by RBC to receive $500 for her altruism.
The 24-year-old saw a commercial talking about a feature on the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) website that encouraged people to submit their stories to be highlighted on the website, so that’s what she did.
“They wanted people to share their feel-good stories about what they were doing during COVID to help others or how they were finding a way to make a difference. So, I went on the website just to see what it was about, and it said there was an option to share your story. So, I thought I might as well put it out there and see what happened,” said Reimer.
Reimer had to explain her story in 250 characters and submitted a photo from the March 24 article that appeared in the Athabasca Advocate of her handing out the food bags.
"I thought, well, I have like two sentences, let's see what I can explain in two sentences. So. I wrote about how when the schools closed, I thought about the kids that relied on the food, so I started the food bags,” she said. “And then I submitted the story and the picture of the newspaper article because I thought if I can only submit 250 characters, at least they can read more in the article.”
Reimer never knew there was any money attached to having her story chosen, she just thought it would be “awesome to have my story displayed and shown to people" but now that she has the unexpected cheque, she plans on using it to keep paying it forward.
"I do plan on using that money to pay it forward again and to help somebody again. I think it's awesome that they do that and everybody that's on the website gets the chance to get that money to keep them going,” Reimer said. "I know that we'll be able to use that money to help people in another way so that was just a bonus.”
Heather Stocking, TownandCountryToday.com
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