OUR HEART BEATS GREEK...HELP US BUILD OUR SCHOOL

The Greek School Committee, Students, Parents & Teachers of the Greek Orthodox Community of East Vancouver, Saint Nicholas & Dimitrios Church, are reaching out & asking for the help of fellow Greeks across the world to help us towards our goal of raising $750,000.00 for the building of an Annex, for our Greek Orthodox Language School which is involved in a program that will develop innovative web and mobile tools for teaching and learning Greek in the Diaspora.

If our fellow Greeks from all parts of the world can come together, support & donate just $2 dollars towards our goal of the $750,000, we can have our building (with a much smaller and more manageable mortgage). It would be a true miracle if we raised enough to pay for the entire building! Any amount helps & we are grateful from the bottom of our hearts.  Prayers are also welcome and appreciated! 

 Almost 4 1/2 years ago, our Community came together & agreed to build the Annex. It took a while but we finally broke small ground on March 28, 2019.  But because of ongoing delays, the costs of the building is projected at approximately $1.1 million dollars. We have secured partial funding & are actively raising funds to make this dream a reality. However, due to the sky-rocketing high costs of building supplies & trades in Vancouver, we are still hoping to raise $750,000.00

 A brief history about our story:  Our non-profit school started in 2007 with a handful of students. In the years since it has grown exponentially and currently serves about 60 - 70 students. Since its inception, our school has been operating in the main church building.  We have only one small classroom (the former boardroom).  In this space, we offer the G.O.D.S. Kids Program (for 30 months & up) & classes from Kindergarten to High School.   We have 2 to 4 classes running at one time. Sometimes classes are happening in the Church Narthex when the small church hall isn’t available.  This is not a conducive/ideal learning environment for our students & our future generation.  It would be great for our students to have proper classrooms for the learning of the Greek language, culture and heritage.  It’s definitely challenging and we thank our teachers & students for working so hard in this less than ideal environment.  

We are also pleased to announce that we are working with the Hellenic Studies Program at Simon Fraser University (SFU) as part of their “Rebooting the Greek Language Project".  It is a partnership grant spearheaded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at SFU that aims to develop innovative web and mobile tools for teaching & learning Greek in the Diaspora.  Its multi-year project involving Greek Language Experts, Linguists, Web & Mobile App developers along with media designers & developers.  

 As our community & school are growing, the new Church Annex Building is essential for our children to learn Greek language, history & culture in proper classrooms.  Additionally, the new building will also have a lounge space for our Greek seniors and will be available for all community members to use.

Please help us build the first Greek & Orthodox School & Community building in Vancouver, BC Canada.   Greeks are infamous for their Filotimo & we are all over the world!!  We are all Greek & Proud!!! 

God bless you all always,

The School Committee, Students, Parents & Teachers of the G.O.C.O.E.V. & all its members thank you wholeheartedly!

E-mail:  [email redacted]

Link to our building project:  https://www.goeastvan.ca/building-project