Students and staff at Elliot Lake’s Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School celebrated Epilepsy Awareness Week from March 21 to March 25.
The celebration is an annual fundraiser by the school with the raising of an epilepsy flag at city hall and sharing information on epilepsy, which several students at Fatima deal with.
“On Monday, we went to the city hall where we met up with Mayor Dan Marchisella. He presented us with a special proclamation and raised the Epilepsy Awareness flag. We shared a work package, videos and information regarding epilepsy which each class used to learn about the cause,” said principal Andrew Chi.
“We shared facts every morning on our announcements. We had an Epilepsy Awareness Fundraising table from Tuesday to Friday which sold all things purple."
Purple is recognized as a colour used to symbolize epilepsy world-wide.
"We had a jar of purple chocolates which students guessed the amount all week. The winner was Eliana, who guessed 179 chocolates. We had a jar of jelly-beans where students placed guesses for the purple jelly beans. The winner of that jar was Oakley who guessed 70 purple jelly-beans,” the principal added.
On Thursday, school council students and young leaders painted nails purple for any interested students and staff who made a donation to the cause.
Friday was the big Purple Day.
“All students and staff wore purple for house points. We gave every student a delicious purple cookie.”
The week of events raised $380 to donate to Epilepsy Sudbury-Seize.
"We are very proud of all our students and staff who demonstrated incredible enthusiasm and interest in Epilepsy Awareness. Our school is directly affected by Epilepsy and the support from our school is really an amazing thing to see. We are very happy to continue to raise awareness and have fun doing it," Chi said.