Abby’s Story

This story was featured in our 2021 Annual Report. It’s a fictionalized account, based on numerous real-life stories we’ve encountered at Promise.

Abby loves watching Disney movies, solving Rubik’s cubes and playing on the swings with her grade 3 classmates. She sometimes has a hard time putting her emotions into words and feeling like she belongs. Abby was recently reunited with her mom after spending two years in foster care, and they live together in a subsidized apartment in the Downtown Eastside. Her mom works as a cashier at a nearby grocery store and was delighted to learn about Promise’s accessible programs from the school family worker.

When Abby started coming to the Promise After-School Program, she was happy that they got time to play on the playground before walking there from school. She was placed in a small group of kids with a leader she recognized as the older sister of one of her classmates. Together they ate goldfish crackers and carrot sticks and filled out an activity sheet where they chose colours to illustrate how they would feel in different situations. One of the leaders sat with her during reading time to help her with the trickier words. Later on during free time, she and two of the other girls drew their favourite characters from the movie Encanto.

Promise programs are designed to give Abby a place where she belongs, beyond home and school. At Promise, she knows that someone is in her corner and available for her to talk to. It’s a place where she can have fun, make new friends, work on important life skills like reading and mental wellness, and feel safe. And it gives her mom some relief without financial burden, so she’ll have more bandwidth to care for Abby during the hours she’s at home. We believe that Abby – like every kid – deserves to have the support she needs to thrive early on in life, regardless of her situation.