Hello Friends! We have another COVID Crisis Update:
After holding out as long as we could to provide various forms of on-site programming to our youth, we came to the conclusion that it is more difficult for our youth to visit their safe space with so many health safety rules (for their own good) than it would be to offer services in other ways.
Some of you may have seen larger groups of our youth around our neighbourhood, and this is part of the reason we're making the super difficult decision to end all on-site programming for now: so we can set our youth up for success during the COVID Crisis and not be a hot-spot for gathering, which is not safe in these circumstances.
What we are going to do is continue to get as many of our youth as possible to our brand new CONNECTED: Messaging-Based Mentorship program, where our dedicated, screened & trained volunteers can continue to stay connected to our youth and support them through these uncertain times, and can help to connect them to our crisis support services.
Our Crisis Support staff will continue to work hard, mostly via messaging and phone calls, to support our youth through their own crisis situations and advocate for them to have their needs met for things like mental health, housing, funding, and even health care.
Further, while we simply can't run meal programming at this time, we are accepting daily requests for food from our youth and will do food deliveries for those who need it at this time.
Our team is already working through ways to keep our youth active in positive activities while practicing health safety, including:
- "The COVID Contests" - a writing/art/photography contest series for our youth to capture the drastic life changes during this crazy season
- Support Groups (Online only) as a way to continue some of the clubs and support groups we would normally run at full program times
- Fun engagement content (online only) to keep positive messaging in their lives
This isn't as good, but we will still do absolutely everything within our power to support these kids safely at this time.
In the mean time, we are excitedly working with some other charity partners such as Brantford Blessing Centre, Friendship House, The Kindness Centre, Soup for the Soul, Grace Anglican Church Brantford, and others to ensure that our high-needs homeless and marginalized population have their needs met, especially around food security.
*Note: If you have recently donated to support our meal programs and would prefer for us to send that back to you, just send us a message! We are also happy to redirect these funds toward these centralized collaborative meal security projects for the youth AND adult population. ... See more