Daniel Germain
Born1964 (age 59–60)
Verdun, Quebec
Known forPresident and founder of the Breakfast Club of Canada

Daniel Germain, CM CQ MSM (born 1964) is a Canadian philanthropist. He is president and founder of the Breakfast Club of Canada, a Canadian charity that promotes and assists the establishment and maintenance of school breakfast programs in Canada.[1] The Breakfast Club provides more than 48 million breakfasts every year to more than 250,000 students in over 1,900 schools across Canada.[2]

Background

Born in Verdun, Quebec, his parents broke up when he was young and he spent much of his childhood in foster care.[1] Struggling in school, he dropped out and spent his late teens and early 20s as a smalltime drug dealer, before resolving to change his life after getting arrested and spending some time in jail in the late 1980s.[1]

He joined a Canadian International Development Agency relief program to Mexico,[3] and participated in 60 aid trips to Mexico and Haiti over the next five years.[1]

Breakfast Club of Canada

In 1994, he launched a breakfast program at an elementary school in Longueuil, Quebec, which expanded into the Club des petits dejeuners du Québec.[4] The organization further expanded into the rest of Canada in 2005 as the Breakfast Club of Canada.[1]

In 2006, he created the Millennium Promise Summit, an annual conference of global leaders and activists on strategies to eliminate child poverty.[5]

Honours

In 2004, Germain was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal.[6] In 2007, he was made a Knight of the National Order of Quebec.[7]

In 2009, he was made a member of the Order of Canada[8] and in 2012 he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.[9]

In 2011, Correlieu Secondary School in Quesnel, British Columbia, upon learning that Germain had never completed his high school education, granted him an honorary high school diploma.[10]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Realizing extraordinary dreams". Montreal Gazette, April 13, 2009.
  2. ↑ "Staples Canada supports Giving Tuesday movement, partners with Breakfast Club of Canada". Canada NewsWire. November 22, 2018.
  3. ↑ "Visionary feeds children". Quesnel Cariboo Observer, October 22, 2009.
  4. ↑ "Breakfast club backed by minister". Montreal Gazette, November 3, 1998.
  5. ↑ "Clinton, Stronach to speak at global poverty conference". Waterloo Region Record, September 13, 2006.
  6. ↑ "Governor General announces 47 Meritorious Service Decorations". Canada NewsWire, April 21, 2005.
  7. ↑ "National Order of Quebec Citation" (in French).
  8. ↑ "Order of Canada Citation".
  9. ↑ "Daniel Germain receives Diamond Jubilee medal". Quesnel Cariboo Observer, June 8, 2012.
  10. ↑ "Quesnel high school grants Daniel Germain honorary high school diploma". Quesnel Cariboo Observer, June 30, 2011.
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