We all know 2020 hasn’t been an especially fun year, and it’s normal to feel paralyzed and helpless when global-level events like COVID-19 are impacting you.
But there is a remedy for that feeling of despair” taking action to help others.
Giving Tuesday was conceptualized in 2012 as something of an antidote to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and other consumption-based holidays. There is an umbrella website, givingtuesday.ca, for Canadians to visit that lists organizations that would be helped by your money or your time.
We’ve highlighted just a few in our coverage areas that might be a good place to start taking action.
Nova Scotia
Shelter Nova Scotia
It’s easier to “stay the blazes home” when you have a home. Not everyone does.
Shelter Nova Scotia is trying, person by person, to change that.
“Our mission is to help people in crisis transition back into the community,” says Jayme Lynn Butt, public relations and fundraising manager for Shelter Nova Scotia.
“Whether it means that you are homeless, or whether you are getting out of jail and are now about to reenter the community, or whether you're somebody who’s been chronically homeless and now is being given a supportive apartment, we help you when you're in crisis, we help you transition into the community.”
Shelter Nova Scotia runs six facilities, made up of two emergency shelters, two community residential facilities (what were once called “halfway houses”), and two supportive apartments for people who have had a hard time finding regular housing.
The organization is trying something new this year to help direct donations where it's most needed. For the holiday season, the group is launching a website that allows donors to buy specific products the shelter needs.
“It’s going to give people the ability to help us,” says Butt. “The back end is like something that somebody would use for a wedding registry. And so it’s got lists of all the things we need, it’ll show the quantity that we need, and every time that somebody buys it, the quantity goes down.”
The Aninga Project
Not every child gets to go to school, and not every child gets to live the life they deserve. Organizations like the Aninga Project tackle that injustice, one child at a time.
The Aninga project operates as two teams, one based in Halifax, N.S., the other in East Africa.
“We educate and empower young women in Uganda, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo,” says Jenny Benson. “We work with community organizations in each of those countries who have been looking to educate and empower young women themselves. “
Having teams in each place help the organization leverage the strengths of each.
“It’s much more difficult to fundraise there than it is here,” says Benson. “We give them the boost that they need to put girls into school. All of our girls are in different schools, so we want to make sure that they are a cohesive unit and that they feel the support of our organization wherever they are in the country.”
The Aninga project was born in 2006 from a collaboration between two families, the Bensons from Canada and their friends the Asikis, from Uganda.
Aninga is the name of the first girl they ever sent to school. They are currently supporting 40 girls.
“The girls have to make commitments about their willingness to learn, their enthusiasm about school,” says Benson. “We support them all the way through university, so we have regular check-ins with them. We don’t want to be sending people to school that don’t want to be in school.”
COVID-19 has had a major impact on these girls and has temporarily shifted the project’s priorities.
“We’re delivering food, cooking oil, rice, water, just to keep people alive because the government put lockdowns in place without thinking about how people would eat,” says Benson.
“That came with significant costs that were unexpected for us in a year where we can’t deliver any of our normal fundraisers.”
They will be launching their biggest fundraiser of the year, Holiday Hope, on Giving Tuesday, with information available on their website.
Other places to consider supporting:
Brigadoon
Being a child with a chronic illness means being marked as different. Most kids just want to be kids. Brigadoon provides them that opportunity, with summer camps and other programming.
Feed Nova Scotia
Every grocery store in Nova Scotia is stuffed with food. There is no rational reason for people to go hungry. And yet they do. Places like Feed Nova Scotia do the work to get food to the people who need it.
Young Naturalists’ Club
The Young Naturalists’ Club provides programming that helps kids learn about the nature that surrounds them.
Newfoundland and Labrador
The Association for New Canadians
You live in a place where you’ve had years, decades even, to learn how everything works. Where to go for services, who to talk to, what unspoken rules need to be navigated.
Newcomers to the country haven’t had that advantage. Groups like the Association for New Canadians help them catch up.
“It can be challenging just to travel in a foreign country if you're unfamiliar with the culture and the climate,” says Jim Murphy, director of language services. “First and foremost, we really help to provide that familiarity. And an agency that they can go to for answers to any kind of questions, like how do I find a job, how do I improve my English, how do I find health services?”
The ANC runs a multi-faceted slate of programming to meet the range of challenges facing new Canadians. As such, they are looking for volunteers to help fill particular needs.
“Our volunteer program is very targeted, we have specific activities that they can support,” says Murphy. “We run regular conversation circles, during which time we have members of the community come to the ESL training centre to offer their support from a language perspective. We also have very targeted supports around a breakfast program whereby volunteers can sign up to become part of the preparation team.”
The pandemic, which last left no part of society untouched, has forced the ANC to adapt on the fly.
“There were definitely challenges around delivering settlement services, in particular for new arrivals who happened to arrive during the onset of COVID,” says Murphy. “Definitely a lot of challenges there around housing and health supports and the like. [For language training] our challenge was to try to flip the switch to online learning. Many challenges with that, including the availability of technologies for clients. And, of course, uptraining the staff so that they were able to deal with learning to teach online.”
Look up the ANC online and donate your money or your time to help new Canadians feel as comfortable here as you do.
Stella’s Circle
Nobody’s struggle is the same. You might have had it harder than most, you might have had it easier. But we all fall down sometimes. Organizations like Stella’s Circle in St. John’s, NL exist to give people who have fallen hard a hand back up.
“We help adults facing barriers to fully participating in their community,” says Laura Ivany, marketing manager. “Those barriers can include mental health issues, addictions, trauma, poverty, homelessness, criminal backgrounds, low literacy, and long periods of unemployment. We strive to help them transform their lives under three core pillars of real homes, real help, and real work. That’s providing housing services, counselling services, and employment services.”
Although they are based in St. John’s, many of their programs are provincial in scope. The organization casts a wide net, trying to tackle as many challenges as possible.
That includes the Naomi Centre, an emergency shelter for young women; the Community Support Program, working to keep people with intensive mental health needs at home and not in institutions; and the Hungry Heart Cafe, which gives people a chance to acquire useful work experience.
Ivany points out that COVID-19 has helped expose some of the unseen barriers to full participation in our always-online society.
“We had a participant that had enough money to ride the bus, go to a grocery store and come home. And yet when he got to the grocery store, the hours had changed during COVID and he couldn’t grocery shop,” says Ivany.
“We assume there is access to information, and our governments assume we can go online to do self-assessments and we have a tool to call 811. But many of our participants did not.”
On Giving Tuesday Stella’s Circle will be able to match donations thanks to a $5,000 match pledge from Bluedrop. Their signature holiday event, Light Up Hope, will be happening virtually this year.
“We’re still celebrating the day with a virtual event, and we look forward to sharing all the aspects that people have come to love with Light Up Hope virtually so people can enjoy it at home,” says Ivany.
“There’s always music, performances by our Inclusion Choir, so we’re so excited to still be able to bring that to our community this year to help celebrate a remarkable year.”
Other places to consider giving:
Newfoundland and Labrador Brain Injury Association
For all its incredible ability, the brain is an organ like any other, subject to injury. Recovery from such injuries can be long, difficult, and existentially frightening. The Newfoundland and Labrador Brain Injury Association helps support people through that process.
St. John’s Status of Women Council
Women have not been treated fairly by society, and continue to face significant challenges not experienced by men. The St. John’s Status of Women Council makes sure the work of fighting that inequality doesn’t fall on the shoulders of individuals.
We have a responsibility to the animals that share their lives with us. Sometimes, we fail in that responsibility. The St. John’s SPCA is there to help make sure that the animals themselves don’t pay the price for that failure, through adoption, spaying, and neutering programs.
Prince Edward Island
Emergency Animal Response Team
We share our lives with animals, both the good and the bad. When emergencies happen, those animals often need help as much as we do.
With emergency services trained and focused on helping people, someone needs to be focused on helping animals. Enter the Emergency Animal Response team.
Led by wife and husband team Lynn Davis and Ron McConnell, this volunteer outfit has been doing what they can for the Island’s animals.
“We’ll respond to just about any emergency, depending on our availability, obviously. But now that we’ve got volunteers from one end of the Island to the other, it’s a lot easier,” says McConnell.
They get calls from civilians, as well as emergency services.
“If they come onto something that does have animals involved - a house fire or a barn fire, a horse stuck in a ditch somewhere - then they can call us as well. That way, the response is a lot faster.”
EART has a network of 40 volunteers across the province, including two veterinarians and a veterinary technician.
“All have to have police background checks because we’re going into people's homes,” says McConnell. “We require our group to have basic incident command training, which is through public Safety PEI, and then we offer in-house training on sheltering techniques and how to set up shelters.”
Flexibility and compassion have become the hallmarks of the organization.
“Big or small, we save them all. We’ve had goats in our barn after a fire in Tignish. We’ve had horses in our barn during Dorian. Other members have helped with cats after housefires, things like that. We have people that are experienced and trained in exotic animals. We can call on this vast pool of knowledge that we have.”
The group is currently fundraising to offset the cost of an ambulance they acquired to act as a mobile command centre. Animals are essential to our lives, and we have a responsibility to them because of that.
If you want to help pay back that debt, check out the EART website or Facebook page.
P.E.I. Association for Newcomers to Canada
Even to other Atlantic Canadians, Prince Edward Island feels like a country unto itself.
There’s a different rhythm to life on the Island. It feels like everyone there knows everyone else.
It makes for a close community, but as a new arrival, it can also make it hard to carve out a place for yourself. The PEI Association for Newcomers to Canada helps smooth that introduction.
“We provide settlement assistance to new immigrants who arrive in PEI,” says communications director Todd MacEwan. “That entails a lot of things, including support for youth and children, getting them registered for school. That includes introducing them to the healthcare system, helping them with employment, helping them with any additional documentation that they need to settle into their new communities.”
As with most organizations, the PEI ANC accepts any financial contributions people can make, as it gives them a fund that can be used for individual needs as they arise.
Gift cards are also welcome, as they allow for both a targeted donation and a quick means of assistance to ANC clients.
“If people are looking just to make a small contribution or donation, gift cards, usually for grocery stores or other services tend to go a long way,” says MacEwan. “That way, when we give them to clients, they can get the items and the services that they need more immediately.”
If people wish to donate larger items, MacEwan asks they call in, a sentiment echoed by most giving organizations. They aren’t generally set up to handle and store items that aren’t immediately needed, although the need does arise from time to time.
“We do need, sometimes, larger donations. A lot of people will be offering furniture or bedding, that sort of stuff. We don’t normally put that out there, just because we lack significant storage space,” he says.
“If people do have contributions of housewares, furniture, things of that nature, they can call us and talk to somebody in our settlement department, and if there is a case where we need specific items, then usually it’s worked out that way.”
The organization's highest volunteer need is in the English tutoring program.
“We provide the training, it’s about a six-hour online course that people can complete on their own. Then we’ll match the volunteer tutor up with the student and they can work on their own schedule and proceed on their own pace,” says MacEwan. “Just a casual, one-on-one English language tutoring session.”
If you have some time on your hands this winter on PEI, why not use it to extend a warm welcome to new Islanders who want to be part of the community?
Other places to give:
Camp Triumph
Camp Triumph is a place where kids with sick or disabled family members can go to just be kids again. It’s a unique program in Canada, giving kids a network of friends who understand what it is they’re going through. They are funded through donations; visit the website to find out more.
Queen Elizabeth Hospital Foundation
The QEH Foundation is launching its 2020 Friends for Life campaign on Giving Tuesday. The foundation raises money for medical equipment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. With better equipment, the hospital can offer more services on-island so patients don’t need to deal with travel costs and stress on top of illness.
Inclusions East
Inclusions East helps people with intellectual or dual disabilities take part in the life of their community. They offer programs, vocational training, and community support to help make sure that their clients experience as much of life as possible.
The organizations featured in this piece are not the only worthy Giving Tuesday partners - visit the website, givingtuesday.ca, to see other options, or consider some of the organizations in your local community that may be in need this season.
In a year where so much has felt out of our control, take action, exercise your free will, and help. There’s more good being done than we know about. Giving Tuesday can be a time for you to be part of that good.
