Beaver Staff
Students at North Addington Education Centre (NAEC) had a unique opportunity to get some Christmas shopping down with some of Lennox and Addington’s finest.
Known as Shop With A Cop, the program ran the final week of school and saw six students from NAEC, along with teacher Josh Goodfellow, do some online shopping with Lennox and Addington OPP officers Helen Lamont and Pam Cote. The officers helped the students purchase, wrap and deliver their gifts.
The original idea was to have the officers bring the students- Izaak Vlasik, Isaak Mazurski, Zachary Mazurski, Izzy Snider, Riley Brown, Xavier Flagler and Jacob Ray, to Napanee to do the shopping. With COVID-19 numbers of the rise, the plan was altered to have the officers visit the school on Dec. 15 for lunch and to make a shopping list with the students. The officers then returned to Napanee to pick up the presents and returned on Dec. 17 to wrap the presents, which were then delivered to local families along with ingredients for a Christmas turkey dinner.
Goodfellow and Lamont reached out to local businesses to see if they’d be interested in sponsoring the program and the response was overwhelming with enough money raised to have the six students participate in the program. Their support made Shop With A Cop possible and brought happiness to a few special children and their families.
After a successful first year, NAEC along with the OPP plan to expand the Shop With A Cop program next year to include more schools in Lennox and Addington.