2018 Parent Volunteer Appreciation Evening

This year’s event was being held to commemorate National Volunteer Week (April 15 to 22) under the theme of Volunteers – Heart of our Community. 

Joseph Perretta, his wife Lina Di Giovanni and their daughter Alexia, received the EMSB Volunteer Ambassadors of the Year Award. The family owns the Montreal Artic Junior AAA hockey team. Players visit schools regularly to push the stay in school message and take part in scrimmages. They give thousands of tickets out to schools each season. Lina was a longtime parent volunteer at the EMSB.

The Volunteer of Distinction was Laura Saragosa from Edward Murphy Elementary School in Hochelaga Maisonneuve. 

The 2018 Parent Volunteer Appreciation Evening was held in memory of Janice Lacroix, a beloved former communications consultant at the EMSB  who first helped establish this event 17 years ago. She passed away last fall after a brief illness.

Time and space do not allow the EMSB to honour all of its nearly 1,500 volunteers in person. Therefore, only those individuals who have volunteered for more than five years  attend the reception, representing some 500 people. However, several thousand copies of a commemorative program book will be distributed to each school.

The emcees for the evening were Global News reporter Elysia Bryan Baynes, a graduate of Royal West Academy in Montreal West and EMSB Communications and Marketing Specialist Michael Cohen.  For the ninth consecutive year, La Capitale was the title sponsor for this event. La Capitale Financial Services which is a member of La Capitale Financial Group, offers a wide range of products and services that are designed to simplify financial choices for members working in the public and parapublic sectors in over 900 public and parapublic institutions across the province.  These services include: personal financial advice; savings, investments and funds; individual life and health insurance; mortgages and personal loans; insurance for automobiles, recreational vehicles, home, travel and legal access; commercial insurance; and group insurance.

Event Sponsors

Along with La Capitale, the 2018 EMSB Volunteer Appreciation Evening was proud to have the following companies as its major sponsors: Steve’s Music Store, is a major force in the Canadian music industry since 1965, which caters to all kinds of musical needs; Loft Uniforms, sells a large selection of school uniforms for public and private schools, at both elementary and secondary levels, across Quebec and Ontario; Green Apple Studio (www.greenapplestudio.ca), is a photography studio that serves schools and daycare centres, and uses award-winning background replacement technology, which gives more flexibility and choices when it comes to student portrait photos. They are also the official photographer for Volunteer Appreciation Night; Global Montreal a longtime supporter of the EMSB and Volunteer Appreciation Evening; Promotions Hannah is an agency that specializes in offering promotional products and strategies that help to impact overall growth objectives, with their main focus of contributing towards their clients’ overall profit and sales evolution; Fana Sports manufactures custom made sports team uniforms for all sports, which are sewn in their own facility. They also offer cresting and numbering services, as well as a new cut-and-sew customized teamwear line; EF Educational Tours, which since 1965 has become the world leader in international education by focusing on opening the world through education through cultural experiences, language and academics. They have conducted educational tours around the world in such countries as Greece, Japan, Italy, Costa Rica, Poland and Ecuador. They have also organized 50 tours for 12 EMSB schools; Building Blocks Tutorials, which was founded in 2004, and offers final exam crash courses and academic workshops, with an aim to instill effective and lifelong learning strategies and problem solving skills, which in turn helps to build a sense of confidence, motivation and success for students that will not only impact them academically, but also professionally and personally.