Does your child (7-15 years old) have a severe food allergy? Would you like your child to connect with other children with food allergies, learn strategies for managing food allergies, and feel more confident managing food allergies?
We are proud to offer the Allergy Pals and Allergy Allies online peer mentorship program. This program was created through the Social Support Research Program at the University of Alberta and is used under license by Food Allergy Canada.
The program is funded by a grant from TD Securities.
Program information
The program includes eight weekly one-hour online support sessions on GoToMeeting. There are two sessions offered, broken out by age of the children with food allergies:
- Allergy Pals – ages 7-11
- Allergy Allies – ages 12-15
The sessions take place over the internet, using safe and secure online meeting tools. They are led by older peer mentors with food allergies, under the guidance of a youth program coordinator. Once registered, your child will be placed into a group on a day/time convenient for your family.
We have received outstanding feedback on our previous sessions and are excited to continually grow the program by adding more mentors and participant spaces. Watch the videos below to learn about the impact this program makes!
All of our mentors receive training and encourage positive conversations among group members. They will never give out medical advice and will curb conversations that may be scary to some children (like details of reaction severity). Every session has a program coordinator listening in, ready to step in if a conversation veers in the wrong direction.
Register
The next 8-week session will take place this fall from September 25 to November 13, 2021.
Allergy Pals and Allergy Allies have ongoing sessions throughout the year. Please sign up for our Allergy Alerts to receive registration updates for future sessions.
Your donation to Food Allergy Canada helps keep programs like Allergy Pals and Allergy Allies available. Please donate online here.
