Montreal educator recognized at WE Day for getting students involved

Vince Lacroce was one of 2,000 educators and students who gathered at Montreal’s Théatre Saint-Denis on Feb. 21 to celebrate WE Day — a day meant to empower and motivate youth to make a positive difference in the community, not only locally, but on a global level as well.

Lacroce was recognized with a We-Day award for the work he does as a spiritual community animator with the English Montreal School Board (EMSB), a job he’s held for 15 years.

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A humble Lacroce, quickly pointed out his success is not his alone.

“I don’t want to take all the credit because it takes an entire team to do these types of events,” he said. “But I’m glad that the students and the parents, the community and especially the schools and the administrators feel proud of these types of accomplishments.”

Part of Lacroce’s mandate with the EMSB is to do humanitarian work to get students involved in the community.

“We’ve helped hospitals, we’ve worked with senior centres, we do lots of types of fundraisers and we also do events around spirituality around the holidays,” he said, adding the goal is to educate students about the importance of giving back.

Lacroce said the events and activities are geared to and inspired by the students themselves.

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One of those activities was a fundraiser for Christian Gavard, a former music teacher at Laurier MacDonald High School who passed away.

“The entire school raised $98,000,” Lacroce said, adding that for him, it was the most memorable.

Over his 15-year career, the EMSB has raised over $600,000 to support different causes.

Currently, Lacroce is working on a project with Free the Children, called Feeding the Future.

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The goal of the fundraiser is to help build a school in Kenya, by selling Mason Jars filled with ready-to-go ingredients.

“We’re having our students come up with their own recipes then we’re working with the nutritionist and our health services to tweak them,” Lacroce said.

He hopes EMSB students taking part in the different activities will come away with a better sense of what’s going on in the world around them.

“A lot of our projects are based on virtues like love, compassion, empathy,” he said. “Especially in our world, we want our students to become empathetic about what’s going on in the world.”