Jean-Claude Huriaux, a committed citizen of Saint-Hyacinthe, Que., has reached the impressive milestone of having sent 500,000 stamps to Development and Peace over the past five years!
Many may be familiar with Development and Peace’s stamp project. Anyone from across Canada can send us the “used” stamps that come affixed to their mail. We forward them to Guy Vézina in Saint-Hubert, Que., for sorting and sale to collectors. Since its inception in 1992, this initiative has raised over $600,000 for our organization.
One of the recent heroes of this project is Jean-Claude Huriaux, for whom the commitment to collecting stamps for this cause is a family project. His wife is an employee of the Intact insurance company. With her employer’s permission, she brings the company’s incoming mail envelopes home. Huriaux and his nonagenarian father-in-law take care of cutting out the stamps. They also receive stamps from the Église Vivante de Saint-Hyacinthe and the Richelieu-Yamaska branch of Quebec’s FADOQ seniors’ network.
Every few weeks, the family fills a bag with 20,000 stamps, and Huriaux heads to Montreal to drop them off at the Development and Peace head office. Because he does not own a car, this drop-off entails a three-hour commute by public transit each time!
In September 2020, Stefany Dupont, Development and Peace’s animator for the Greater Montreal region, had the pleasure of meeting Huriaux when he came in with yet another bag of 20,000 stamps. He proudly told her that with that deposit, he could say that he had collected 500,000 stamps for Development and Peace! He estimates that each stamp can be sold for about 5 cents. If we do the math, assuming that all his stamps were sold, Huriaux has brought $25,000 to Development and Peace over the past five years.
This deserves the sincerest applause.
THANK YOU, Jean-Claude Huriaux!
It is thanks to people like you that our movement can work in solidarity with people from the Global South.
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