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Girls show appreciation to SAR for dog rescue Jessica Peters The Progress Once their rescue missions are over, the volunteers at Chilliwack Search and Rescue don’t usually hear back from the people they’ve saved. It’s even more rare to get follow ups about the animals they’ve rescued along the way. So when the Chilliwack SAR team had heard that two young girls wanted to thank them for saving their grandparents’ dog, they were pleasantly surprised. The girls, named Abby and Anna, were bringing along a sizable cash donation, too. “I could be wrong but I think this is the first time in the 18 years I’ve been on the team to have young people donating to us,” said Doug Fraser, SAR’s search manager. When the girls visited the SAR headquarters with their mom, they were treated to a tour of the facilities, and Fraser was told the story of how a dog they rescued came to be lost. Their story goes back to the late spring, when the two girls were helping to dog sit for their grandparents up at Cultus Lake. At some point, the dog “caught a scent of something and off it went,” Fraser said. Hours passed as the girls and their mom searched frantically. Finally, they received a tip that the dog had been seen around Sweltzer Creek, and off they went to find him there. “This was in May,” Fraser said, “and the water was running fairly high in the creek. This dog had gone in a place in the creek where the banks were too steep for it to get itself out. It was exhausted when the girls’ mom found it.” So, as any animal lover would probably do, the mom went down into the creek to help the stranded canine. Continued: SAR/ p13
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Chilliwack’s Gautham Krishnaraj, 20, will be attending the 59th United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York in March. JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS
Chilliwack slam poet is heading to the UN Jennifer Feinberg The Progress Gautham Krishnaraj of Chilliwack likes to take on global topics with the creative twist of the spoken word. The student and slam poet has been advocating for international issues like girls’ education, and has presented at local schools like G.W. Graham and Sardis secondary. The 20-year-old is the co-founder of Raise Your Voice, and he’s right now gearing up to participate in the 59th session of United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), from March 9-20,
2015 in New York City. “As a young male, advocating for gender equality and girls’ education is something I find to be very important, and I am anxious to meet with the key world stakeholders and partake in valuable discussions,” Krishnaraj told The Progress. The enthusiastic, bilingual university student is in 3rd year microbiology and immunology at McGill University in Montreal, and lives on Promontory Heights in Chilliwack. Krishnaraj is outgoing and passionate about making a difference. “He’s been actively involved is serving his community since he was in Grade 6,” said his mom,
Thilaka Krishnaraj. He doesn’t sit around and wait for other people to ask him to join an effort, she explains. He forges ahead and does it on his own. “To me, he’s a leader,” she said. He said he’s excited to see what will happen at the UN session that he has preparing for in the new year. It’s especially timely because it’s been 20 years since the adoption of the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. And 2015 is all about implementing the lofty goals they drafted. “I’m glad to see the focus this year is in on tangible action,” he said. “People always say the UN is
only about talking, but this is about action. That is very important and Raise Your Voice was founded with this in mind.” He once spoke before a crowd of 20,000 at the Me to We event in Vancouver in 2011, as part of Tedx Victoria, so it won’t be the first time he discusses the power that young people have to change the world. Krishnaraj launched the nonprofit, Raise Your Voice, two years ago, with his friend, Nik Carverhill, when they were at Pearson College UWC on Vancouver Island. The aim is to “empower youth with Continued: VOICE/ p13
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