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blogcutterWelcome to my third Philanthropic Phriday. Today's donation went to the Caldwell Family Centre:
https://www.caldwellfamilycentre.ca/programs-services/
Back in the 1980s and 90s, I often used to take rush-hour bus 55 or 56 between Baseline & Merivale and downtown. The no. 56 was the more direct bus. But if I missed it or for some other reason (like maybe it was stuffed to the gills) I couldn't get on a 56, there was also the 55, which took a winding detour through the Carlington community.
You could tell as the bus meandered along Caldwell Avenue that this was primarily a have-not neighbourhood, at least from a financial perspective. Racially and linguistically diverse. A lot of newcomers and young single parents. Certainly they had their problems in terms of petty crime, substance abuse and gang activity. But community policing helped. And overall, I was (and continue to be) impressed by their resilience and self-reliance, the way they were able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and help others up as well. There was a real symbiosis here and members all shared their particular skills, experience, drive and initiative for the benefit of the whole. You can see that for yourself if you look at their Programs and Services page, which also has a map of their catchment area.
As you might expect, most of their group activities have either ceased or gone virtual. But they still need to eat and to live; families remain in touch with each other through the magic of telephony, electronics and other devices to combine the benefits of physical distancing with social proximity.
A number of people have come through with suggestions of worthy candidates for receiving future Philanthropic Phriday donations. Although I don't expect to be able to act on all of these, rest assured that I am not ignoring you and have carefully filed your suggestions for future consideration. They're definitely NOT going into File 13 - more like File 911 except that the response time is measured in weeks and months rather than seconds and minutes!
Meanwhile, I hope to enumerate and list some of these possibilities in the next couple of weeks, so that others reading this, whose priorities will likely differ somewhat, can direct their own contributions to suitable causes.
https://www.caldwellfamilycentre.ca/programs-services/
Back in the 1980s and 90s, I often used to take rush-hour bus 55 or 56 between Baseline & Merivale and downtown. The no. 56 was the more direct bus. But if I missed it or for some other reason (like maybe it was stuffed to the gills) I couldn't get on a 56, there was also the 55, which took a winding detour through the Carlington community.
You could tell as the bus meandered along Caldwell Avenue that this was primarily a have-not neighbourhood, at least from a financial perspective. Racially and linguistically diverse. A lot of newcomers and young single parents. Certainly they had their problems in terms of petty crime, substance abuse and gang activity. But community policing helped. And overall, I was (and continue to be) impressed by their resilience and self-reliance, the way they were able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and help others up as well. There was a real symbiosis here and members all shared their particular skills, experience, drive and initiative for the benefit of the whole. You can see that for yourself if you look at their Programs and Services page, which also has a map of their catchment area.
As you might expect, most of their group activities have either ceased or gone virtual. But they still need to eat and to live; families remain in touch with each other through the magic of telephony, electronics and other devices to combine the benefits of physical distancing with social proximity.
A number of people have come through with suggestions of worthy candidates for receiving future Philanthropic Phriday donations. Although I don't expect to be able to act on all of these, rest assured that I am not ignoring you and have carefully filed your suggestions for future consideration. They're definitely NOT going into File 13 - more like File 911 except that the response time is measured in weeks and months rather than seconds and minutes!
Meanwhile, I hope to enumerate and list some of these possibilities in the next couple of weeks, so that others reading this, whose priorities will likely differ somewhat, can direct their own contributions to suitable causes.
