My name is Kyle, and I'm asking for help for my mom, Angel Proulx.

My mom has always worked really hard for us. I've watched her struggle before — but she has always pulled through it. She's always found a way to succeed. This is different. This is the most heartbreaking thing I've ever had to watch my mother go through — and she has been through unspeakable things. There aren't many times I can remember seeing my mom cry. This has devastated her — but it has not broken her. Just look at the fight she's still in. She has given interviews to the St. Catharines Standard, The Canadian Press, CBC News, and the Toronto Star. She has been on the radio. And Jennie Stevens, our MPP, took my mom's story — our story — all the way to Queen's Park, and said my mom's name in the House. Tomorrow, November 6, she'll be live on 97.7 Hits FM / CKTB at 11:30 in the morning. She's still out there, turning up the volume for all of the students who were affected by this life-changing freeze.

My mom went back to school to build a better life for our family and to help the most vulnerable people in our community. She's three months from graduating, with honours, as a Community and Developmental Service Worker. She's already doing the work — forty hours a week at Mom's placement, unpaid, on a housing team, helping people find homes. Almost every night, my mom would fall asleep at her desk over her homework, and I'd have to wake her up so she could go to bed and get at least two or three hours of sleep before getting up for class again.

In October, the province froze OSAP funding for students at Mom's college — through no fault of hers or any student. Mom's funding stopped. Mom's classes stopped. My mom never did. Like the Wonder Woman that she is, she found a way to keep going to placement every day with no funding at all — borrowing rides, riding her bike, even walking.

Because of the freeze, we lost our home. My mom and I are now living in a family shelter. She sold her car trying to save that home. My mom's medications cost about $350 a month out of pocket — she's been going without them since this started.

Now they want her to pay $5,844 — about $365 a week — before she can go back and finish. She has three months left. Three months.

She's not just fighting for our family alone — she is out there fighting for every student this has happened to.

We're asking for $5,844 — the exact amount they want her to pay — so my mom can finish what she started. Every dollar goes to keeping my mom in school. You can sponsor one weekly payment ($365), chip in any amount at all, or share this page — sharing helps more than you know.

My mom has spent her whole life taking care of everybody else. She never asks for help. So I'm asking for her. My mom is always there for me, even through all of this. Three months stand between her and that diploma — please help me make sure she gets there.

Thank you for helping my mom finish.

— Kyle

Read my mom's story in the news:

St. Catharines Standard — "'Setting us up for failure': Niagara students mid-program face withdrawal as Ontario pauses private college OSAP funding"

https://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/news/niagara-region/osap-funding-pause-trillium-college-niagara/article_488aef72-f7b4-5a46-90f7-45e62aabb8b3.html