Calgary parents' social media campaign for education funding gets noticed

A Calgary grassroots parent advocacy group say they're gaining momentum in their efforts to put education front and centre during this provincial election campaign.

It began a few weeks ago with several moms concerned about class sizes launching the SupportOurStudents.ca (SOS) website to advocate for more funding for public education.

Now that effort has morphed into a social media campaign, and a video released just last week is quickly getting noticed, organizers say.

"We've had all kinds of people respond," said Carolyn Blasetti, one of the founding members of SOS.

"Our video has over 80,000 views so that's not just parents in Calgary who are looking at that, and the same with the Twitter responses. It's not just parents in one little enclave."

The video is simple, just kids holding hand-written cue cards with messages such as "I ride the bus one hour 10 minutes both to and from school every day", and "My school uses the stage for a classroom."

SOS says reaction and comments to the video have been overwhelming, with people from across the globe seeing it, and many in Albertaexpressing similar experiences with those seen in the video.

The group is asking Albertans to create their own stills, filling in their own slides of how cuts have affected their children.

Blasetti says SOS is not affiliated with any one political party, adding,"Our goal is to advocate for children and education beyond the election, for sure."