Anna & Claire’s new adventure (wedding/honeymoon/paying-down-school-debt….fund)

To whom it may concern,

Dear friends!

Our two favourite Francophone's are getting married and they need our help starting their new adventure. But first, a little story about how we got here.

Location: The University of Toronto; Date: September 3, 2007; Interior: Bahen Centre, Room 1160 (no I'm not kidding.)

Ten years ago our lovers met in an intro to Environmental Studies class at U of T. I know, shocking, right? It was a surprisingly easy friendship, writing papers late into the night and singing throw backs from high school together. At first, they weren't romantically interested in each other (or so Anna would have you believe), and continued being good friends until Claire's return from a year abroad in Jamaica in September 2009. Following her return, Claire and Anna worked together as part of a group of students attending climate talks at COP15, and thus spent LOTS of time together that semester. They quickly picked up that they were both interested in each other, on a more romantic level. It took a few months, but they finally "declared" their love to each other in January 2010, and the rest, is, as they say: history. Well, not exactly, here is what our love birds have been up to more recently:

Anna completed her Masters of Science in Geography in the fall of 2016 from McGill University, and is currently looking for work in the field of climate change science. Her goal is to foster collaboration in climate change research in the Caribbean region.

Claire is finishing her first year of a Masters in Ecological Economics at York University. Upon completion she'll be starting a financial planning practice that helps families secure their financial future and become ecological citizens.

In other words, they're now both suuuuupper smart, but most importantly, not quite on their financial feet. And here is where YOU and I come in: Anna & Claire need our help to embark on this new chapter of their lives. Getting married isn't cheap, and it's particularly not so when both individuals are graduate students. The money collected here will not go towards some extravagant honeymoon or an unnecessarily large plasma TV. Instead, it will go towards areas of their lives which most of us can actually relate to: rent, debt, medical expenses, outrageously-expensive internet, and food!

That said, however, Anna and Claire didn't explicitly ask for this, I offered to organise this page knowing that even if you and I have not yet met (Hi, I'm Mehdi!), if our friends had a fraction of the impact on your life as they have on mine, then I know that you would support them in any way possible. To this end, I hope we can reach our goal, and most importantly, I hope we can take some joy in the fact that two people who love each other, get to start a whole new adventure with our help.

Best

Mehdi

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