Birthday Wishes club fundraises to help families
By Julieanne Acosta, October 22 2021—
There are many clubs who strive to make a difference on campus and bring students together and the Students’ Union (SU) Clubs Spotlight event focuses on clubs promoting “Community and Belonging” for the month of October.
Birthday Wishes prides itself on providing underprivileged children from financially insecure homes with a birthday party. They have been a long time partner with Brenda’s House which aims to help families with nowhere to turn with living accomodations. As a partner to this organization, Birthday Wishes throws birthday parties for kids while giving back to their families with gifts of encouragement.
The Gauntlet had the opportunity to interview Andy Yuan, a fourth-year accounting student at the University of Calgary and co-president of the Birthday Wishes club on campus.
“Brenda’s House is actually partnered with Children’s Birthday Miracles,” said Yuan. “Through them, we work together to host birthday parties with them.”
The Birthday Wishes club recently won the 2020-2021 Community Service Award for the SU’s Club Awards during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the restrictions placed throughout the year, Birthday Wishes still worked to give back to the community without physically being there, as they’d done for many years.
“Birthday parties online isn’t as exciting because through the computer, communicating the same excitement and energy is very difficult. During the online environment, we managed to come up with plans such as Valentine’s boxes [and birthday boxes] which we give to parents and their children,” said Yuan. “Hosting birthday parties in-person right now is still a little bit difficult due to personal restrictions, however, there are a lot of things that we’re doing to help other different family-based homeless shelters.”
The club can usually be found in Science B, where they host most of their fundraisers in partnership with Crave Cupcakes in order to be able to fully fund and host their birthday party events.
Birthday Wishes hosted their meet and greet on Oct. 7, but Yuan noted that their club is always looking for new members to join.
Birthday Wishes can be reached via Club Hub and are also looking for new executives for those who are interested in being more involved.