INTRODUCTION
From April through June 2025, our Education Pillar stayed focused on real-world support for young people and families, from children’s hospitals and teen centres to refugee classrooms overseas. These months show how our partnerships turn vision into concrete outcomes across Arizona, Texas, India-connected work, and Thailand.
HEALTH AND HOPE FOR CHILDREN
In April, we deepened our long-standing commitment to children’s health. At the Gainey Gives Back event at Gainey Ranch Golf Club, The Steele Family Foundation contributed $10,000 to Phoenix Children’s Hospital. The support helps give young patients access to care and resources that keep them learning, growing, and looking ahead with confidence.
INVESTING IN SAFE SPACES FOR TEENS
Early April also highlighted our partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Scottsdale. At the Celebrate Youth Gala, we joined their community to honour young leaders and congratulate Emma from the Virginia G. Piper Branch as Youth of the Year, a student whose resilience and leadership align closely with the WISE story.
A few days later, we supported Ryan House at their annual Community Breakfast, standing alongside an organisation that provides care, comfort, and support for children and families facing life-limiting conditions. These touchpoints all connect back to one theme: young people do better when they have stable spaces and caring adults around them.
GLOBAL EDUCATION WITH THE ANDREA BOCELLI FOUNDATION
Mid-April, Andrea Bocelli and Veronica Berti dedicated a new Andrea Bocelli Foundation space to The Steele Family Foundation and the WISE Scholarship Program at the ABF Globalab headquarters at the Complesso di San Firenze in Florence. Their public message of appreciation to Mike and Stacey underlined a shared belief in education that reaches students who are often overlooked. This recognition connects our Education Pillar directly to ABF’s work in innovation, music, and learning environments for young people.
CREATIVE TEEN CENTRES AND AFTER-SCHOOL IMPACT
In May, we highlighted our support for Alice Cooper’s Solid Rock Teen Centers at the grand opening of their new Goodyear location. Solid Rock gives teens a safe place to explore music, dance, art, and vocational training. The WISE Scholarship Program shares this focus on structure, mentorship, and purpose, so partnering with spaces where teens feel seen and supported is a direct extension of our Education Pillar.
SUSTAINED SUPPORT THROUGH CAF AMERICA AND WISE
As the quarter moved into June, we highlighted the engine behind a lot of this work. CAF America grants help fund our full-time Senior Scholarship Administrators based at Grace Sober Living, the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Scottsdale, and the Just Keep Livin Foundation. These roles are central to the WISE Scholarship Program: they provide day-to-day guidance, help participants stay on track with the 100-point Earn to Learn model, and respond when life barriers threaten a student’s progress.
This period also underlined who we serve. WISE supports youth and adults who face generational poverty, housing instability, gaps in academic guidance, and addiction recovery. The quarter’s stories show WISE participants building futures that do not repeat those patterns.
GLOBAL CO-OP IMPACT IN THAILAND
To close the quarter, we shared a detailed story from Thailand through our partnership with the University of Waterloo’s Changemakers in Co-op program. With support from The Steele Family Foundation, co-op students Bruce Wu and Rewa Shukla spent their work terms with the Inclusive Education Foundation, an organisation focused on enrolling refugee children in school and equipping migrant teachers.
Rewa helped lead a ten-day calculus workshop for refugee teachers from Myanmar and created classroom materials and formatted research reports. Bruce built real-time inventory systems, streamlined enrolment tracking, and trained staff on digital workflows. Together, their work improved access to education for more than 1,000 refugee children and gave local teachers tools they can carry back to their communities. This is a clear example of our Education Pillar linking Canadian students, international partners, and refugee learners in one shared effort.
CLOSING THOUGHT
Across Q2, one thread stands out. Whether in Arizona teen centres, hospital partnerships, Florence’s Globalab, or refugee schools in Thailand, our Education Pillar keeps circling back to the same commitment: give young people and their families concrete support, strong relationships, and access to learning, then stand beside them while they build the rest.