Silverlines Philanthropy

Before my software career took off, I co-founded Silverlines: a young-adult-led fundraising initiative that raised more than $45,000 for sick children while I was at the University of Ottawa.

The work began as Students for Seniors in Bancroft. My grandmother, suffering from a degenerative nerve disorder and the early stages of dementia, moved into a long-term care community in 2005. It housed around ten residents, and was run by a very limited number of staff.

This rural care community didn't have much in the way of recreation programming, so I started a volunteer program to bring high school students in for weekly visits and programs: mostly cards, dominoes, and swapping stories. It quickly grew from four volunteers to a rotating group of around 15, and the seniors loved every minute of it.

Several years later, while I was President of the University of Ottawa's Computer Science Student Association, another charitable opportunity presented itself. Child's Play, a gamers' charity supporting children's hospitals, had come up recently in response to a wave of negative media coverage about video games. SickKids in Toronto and the Montreal Children's Hospital were both early participants, but CHEO was not a recipient.

Wanting to support our community, I reached out to CHEO on behalf of the CSSA and asked about the program. They had heard about it; they just didn't have any available staff to manage and fundraise for it. So we stepped up.

After graduation, very much wanting to continue with my philanthropic efforts, I founded Silverlines with a diverse board full of fresh grads from uOttawa and Algonquin College. Nurses, lawyers, economists, computer scientists, and business school alumni all lent their expertise to our upstart nonprofit.

Styled as a "happiness charity," we aimed to ultimately benefit three groups in our community: sick children at CHEO and Roger Neilson House, independent seniors living alone, and people suffering from mood disorders.

The first two campaigns got off the ground, with ongoing gifts for kids and social programs for seniors running in community centres. The latter campaign was built on the work we did as Students for Seniors, alongside two of my hometown friends who had been involved before.