Breakfast — it’s often been called the most important meal of the day. And what if your day includes studying for or taking a final exam? It’s easy to see how a good breakfast can play a major role in University of Lethbridge students finding success during the most crucial time of their semester. So, let’s help them out!
The annual Buy a Student a Breakfast (BASAB) campaign begins today and as the final exam period approaches, it’s the perfect opportunity to support ULethbridge students — one breakfast at a time.
“As a community, it’s really the small things that we can do for each other that help build and develop unity,” says Dr. Locke Spencer (MSc '05, PhD ’09), Chair and associate professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy. “So, when you consider what you can do to just show a student you care, this is one thing that is pretty easy for most people.”
How easy? A donation of $6 provides a student with a free breakfast coupon redeemable on campus — offering encouragement and a tangible reminder that their ULethbridge community is behind them.
The annual initiative that last year saw 1,560 breakfast coupons purchased, nearly $10,000 raised in donations, is eyeing doubling that support this year and doubling the positive impact it has for students. With alumni, faculty, staff and friends supporting the campaign, the effort sends a powerful message to students that their community is behind them.
“I was a student who received one of the coupons for Buy a Student a Breakfast during exams, and it really made me feel like I could do it and that there was a team behind me,” says Shanna Brown (BHSc ’16), coordinator of Campus Life Housing. “It means that the village is coming together. It’s our faculty, our community and our alumni who build this wonderful network of support that really wraps around our students.”
The University’s alumni community has long been a major supporter of BASAB and Cyndi Crane (BMus ’95, MEd ’01), president of the University of Lethbridge Alumni Association, says all alumni can relate to the pressures students face this time of the semester and how nutrition plays a part in fueling the mind and setting them up for success.
“My hope for this year’s campaign is that we reach every single ULethbridge alumni, all 55,000-plus, and I want them to go back to that moment, that moment where they were that student writing that test,” she says. “I want them to remember that time in their life when they needed support — and a breakfast like this is that warm hug that everybody deserves.”
First-year Dhillon School of Business student Joshua Nilsson is thankful to the donors who support the program.
“For sure it makes me feel supported,“ he says. “Just knowing there’s someone out there who cared enough to donate their money to help a broke student like me eat, have a good breakfast, it’s great.”
The BASAB campaign runs through Tuesday, Dec. 2, after which coupons will be available to be picked up and utilized by students during the exam period. Those looking to donate can visit: ulethbridge.ca/giving/buy-student-breakfast.