Giving back to the community is important to the locally owned and operated Bow Valley Credit Union.

Yesterday morning (June 26) a few branch members presented a $500 cheque to Fireside School to help with a learning support initiative.

Lisa Pobran, Branch Manager says when deciding on where and what initiative the local branch should support this year, she couldn't help but think of reaching out to Thomas Elbel, the administrator of Fireside School. "I love Mr Elbel, he's fantastic. I have seen the wonderful things he has done when he was a principal at other schools and I know he's very involved here in getting the school up and running."

With the branch's mandate to give back and get involved in the local community, Thomas Elbel connected Pobran with their Learning Support personnel. "He directed me to learning supports and so we all met as a group. We're all passionate about helping kids and then the stationary bikes came up and we thought we would be part of that."

Fireside school will be adding two stationary bikes, one smaller/one larger for students to take healthy breaks.

Allyson Billings, Learning Support teacher shares one bike will be geared more toward kids in grades 1-6 and one for 7-8, and available for all students. "At Fireside we've got universal approaches for everybody; in all classrooms, there's different chairs, counters for kids to work on, stools, rocking chairs, bean bag chairs just trying to meet the needs of everybody. There's a lot of classes that do body breaks throughout the day, especially if kids are having trouble focusing and learning; so we thought to add stationary bikes would be one more thing we could add to the list of choices for kids."

Increasing oxygen and blood flow is beneficial, adds Billings. "Sometimes when kids are working having them have a 5 or 10-minute break just to get their body moving helps when they come back in; they're more focused and it helps support learning."

The two bikes cost $1700 and will be arriving at Fireside School tomorrow. 

For Pobran and her team, they will continue to support different types of initiatives both financially and on a volunteer level.