ROCKY VIEW COUNTY — More than a dozen children who have an interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) are attending Camp Amazon on Wednesday at the company’s fulfillment centre in Rocky View County, north of Calgary.
The Gold Edition camp is part of the tech giant’s larger initiative to raise awareness around childhood cancer.
As part of that, the company is donating $40,000 to the Alberta Children’s Hospital cancer research program.
Jas Khangura is the general manager at Amazon’s YYC1 facility east of Balzac, who presented the cheque.
“I sincerely hope that the effort we are doing today in some way can help them in their journey and also support them and also the organizations that are working closely with the children and their families for their treatment and for finding a cure,” said Khangura.
Melanie Sortland represents the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation and says a team of scientists is working on advancing its knowledge of childhood cancers and transferring that knowledge into newer and better ways to treat cancer.
Sortland says Amazon’s donation and the time spent helping kids living with cancer at it’s facility is welcoming.
“Some of them are going through really tough times, so this is an opportunity for them to still learn and check their development milestones even and just to be distracted too from their day to day lives right now,” said Sortland.
Each of the kids participating in this week’s camp have been diagnosed with the disease.
Every year, more than 300,000 children are diagnosed with pediatric cancer and almost one-third will die from it.
At the camp, kids get the opportunity to see how Amazon picks, packs, and ships customer orders.
They’ll also get to participate in hands-on STEM activities lead by the robotics team at Nelson Mandela High School.
After the camp activities, Amazon is donating $15,000 to the school’s robotics team in support of the award-winning program.
