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Student’s poem pays off for charity

Kaedan Rosman, 11, wins a $5,000 contribution to Habitat for Humanity in Kelowna
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Kaedan Rosman, a Grade 6 student at Shuswap Middle School, wrote a poem that placed second in the Meaning of Home contest to benefit Habitat for Humanity. -Image credit: Tracy Hughes/Salmon Arm Observer

Home clearly has a special place in Kaedan Rosman’s heart. And sharing his thoughts has also helped make a home for others.

Rosman, 11, recently earned second place in the Genworth Canada Support for Habitat for Humanity contest, earning a $5,000 contribution to a Habitat for Humanity project, an iPod and a pizza party for his class at Shuswap Middle School.

With no Habitat for Humanity projects taking place in Salmon Arm, Rosman has directed his funds towards a Habitat for Humanity project in Kelowna, where his grandparents live.

“I was really surprised,” says Rosman of his win. “I didn’t really think it was that good, so it feels a bit weird… I like knowing that something I wrote did something to help other people.”

Rosman says he chose to write a poem because, “an essay is a lot of words.”

He was inspired by a few things, including watching videos of himself as a baby with his parents as he was learning to walk around the house.

“I thought about my parents helping me, how I wasn’t out in the cold, I was inside warm and safe.”

The nation-wide project is a program for Grades 4-6, where students are asked to write on the topic of the meaning of home. All the students in teacher Jaimie Vezina’s French Immersion class participated by submitting written work.

This is the third year Vezina’s students have participated, but the first time she has ever had a winning student.

Here is Rosman’s winning entry:

Home is happy,

Home is for family

It’s where you feel safe, it’s where

You take your first steps and make memories

Where love is on a flow,

It’s where you grow

Somewhere you feel welcome it’s where your friends come

Home is warm like wool

Home isn’t cold like the north pole

Home is not perfect, it’s imperfect

But it’s magnified like a unicorn

Where you feel true,

Home is where we help you

Where you’re safe from the world

Where you learn your first words

Home is where you play

Home is where you spend your day

Your family helps with things that are tough

Home is where you take your first breath

In the end home is a happy place.