DARE Lady: Valerie Arnold-Judge

June 6, 2019 · 0 Comments

Valerie is in her early 70s and had been a Caledon resident for 30 years and now a widow was married to Murray Judge, who was a Ward 2 Councilor.

Judge took an early retirement from a 25-year position in the financial corporate world as a Credit Manager for a large Mississauga company. After leaving the corporate world she started her own bookkeeping service, which is still ongoing today.

While raising her three children who are now grown with children of their own, she found the time to work as a volunteer.

She held an Elected position as the Peel District Public School Board Trustee for 13 years in the Town of Caledon looking after 14 public schools.

Over the years she has been a very busy volunteer with many associations, two years with United Way of Peel, 4 years with Peel Children’s Aid Foundation, 6 years with Caledon/Dufferin Victim Services, and 10 years with Big Brother/Sister of Peel, mentoring a child once a week in the In- School Mentoring Program. Currently for the past two years she is the Treasure of the Caledon Meals on Wheels and is also going into 16 years as the Project Manager for D.A.R.E. for the Kids.

Judge is known as the DARE Lady, for the past 15 years with a wonderful team of volunteers raising the money to keep this program alive. We work alongside with the Ontario Provincial Police, the past year has had Vera Robinson, Karen McDonald, Trudy Westhaver, Karin Casey, Munish Joshi, Dave Sheen, and OPP officer Pablo Perreira as the team.

D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) is a comprehensive prevention education program designed to equip elementary school children with skills to recognize and resist social pressure by saying no to drugs, alcohol and tobacco while making better lifestyle choices. This unique program uses a trained uniformed Ontario Provincial Police officer (Pablo Perreira) to teach a formal curriculum to 1200 Grade 6 students per year in a classroom setting.

We are supported by you our community through our fundraising efforts, we do not receive any government grants and the money goes to train the officer and buy workbooks, graduation certificates, and each student will receive a Black Classic DARE T-shirt. We welcome input from the community, and welcome volunteers. Donations are greatly appreciated. For more info please visit our web site at www.dareforthekids.org.