The Neighbourhood Group Community Services works to address the most pressing issues in the lives of people across the City of Toronto: hunger, homelessness, unemployment, isolation, conflict, violence, youth alienation and the settlement of immigrants and refugees. Each year, they help over 60,000 neighbours by providing more than 100 diverse services and programs from 30 locations across Toronto. Throughout the pandemic, The Neighbourhood Group Community Services continues to offer essential care services to thousands of senior citizens in supportive housing, public housing and their own homes. Our staff also speak the top 10 languages of the City of Toronto, including English, Mandarin, Portuguese, Bengali and more.
Already offering a wide array of services for more than 9,200 vulnerable seniors each year, The Neighbourhood Group Community Services is using the generous donation from the Scheinberg Relief Fund to further tackle the most severe difficulties seniors face: food security, housing, transportation, loneliness, language barriers, and home health care. The Scheinberg Relief Fund enabled The Neighbourhood Group to fully meet the increased needs of their seniors for extended visits from personal support workers, home grocery deliveries, Meals on Wheels services; transport to urgent care appointments, and supply of nutritious fresh food at their on-site food banks. This generous gift also supported The Neighbourhood Group’s capacity to adapt to virtual care through e-visits, and socially-distanced “balcony” events and concerts. The donation was vital to their ability to cover the cost of personal protective equipment to ensure the health and safety of staff, volunteers and seniors during the more than 18,000 personal in-house visits each month. All these Fund-supported activities enabled The Neighbourhood Group to improve the physical and mental health of vulnerable multi-cultural seniors, one of the groups most devastated by COVID-19.
Message of thanks:
“Thank you for being a supporter and ally in this emergency. We are so focused on the low-income residents, tenants and seniors of our City and our own urban neighbourhoods, that I can hardly imagine the reach and complexity of the Scheinberg Relief Fund efforts during a worldwide pandemic. We are glad to partner with you for the big picture.” — Bill Sinclair, CEO, The Neighbourhood Group Community Services