Archives for June 2020

Archive for June, 2020

A message from Executive Director Jyoti Singh

Posted on: June 24th, 2020 by Nellie's No Comments

My first three months as Executive Director of Nellie’s have been challenging. My first day was on a Thursday and five days later, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

We quickly implemented changes and new safety protocols in the shelter, suspended most of our community programs (our transitional housing workers continue to provide virtual and/or telephone support to the women in our community) and developed our new normal.

But a month later, one of the women living at Nellie’s tested positive for the virus. She was quickly moved to one of the city’s quarantine centres, but by then, several others started showing symptoms. Everyone living and working at Nellie’s was then tested for COVID-19. In total 11 residents tested positive and moved to a city quarantine centre. All of our front-line staff tested negative. All remaining residents moved to a nearby hotel while the shelter was thoroughly cleaned and disinfected, and furniture was reconfigured to allow for greater social distancing.

For several weeks, our staff continued to create positive spaces for the women and their children living in the hotel through our programs and workshops that offer therapeutic healing, personal growth and distraction during this challenging and stressful time. On June 10th, nine women and five children moved back into the shelter, while another seven women continue to live at the hotel. A pandemic specialist determined that it wasn’t safe for all the women to return—there simply isn’t enough space in our building to safely practice physical distancing. And so, we will continue to operate and provide services in both locations for the foreseeable future.

So for the time being, we cannot bring our total number of residents back up to pre-pandemic levels. With just 9 bedrooms and 5 washrooms, the shelter simply isn’t large enough to safely house 40 people.

In the coming weeks, we plan to resume our community food program, our W.E.A.V. program (Women Experiencing Abuse and Violence), as well as some of our other community programs. They will look different than before as we strictly follow Toronto Public Health protocols, but they’re a key part of how we help women and their children take the important steps towards accomplishing the next chapter of their lives. As we look to the future, we will be reassessing and rethinking how we deliver all of our programs not just to ensure everyone’s health and safety but to make sure they are inclusive for all. At Nellie’s, we operate within an anti-racism and anti-oppression framework but we always have more to learn and we can always find ways to do better

This pandemic is not going away anytime soon and our long-term focus continues to be on our move to our new shelter. I credit former Executive Director Margarita Mendez and our board of directors, under the leadership of Sherece Taffe and Donna Kellway, with their vision of finding a new space that offered greater accessibility and greater privacy for residents. This same vision now means we’ll have a shelter with an increased ability to implement health and safety measures—measures that will keep everyone at Nellie’s safe during the pandemic and safe during any future outbreaks or health concerns.

As an agency, we continue to have increased and unexpected COVID-19-related operational costs and we are forever grateful of the generosity of those in our community who have helped ensure we can sustain our efforts. But we are now shifting our fundraising focus to the capital costs we need to complete the renovations of the new shelter in anticipation of a 2021 move.

We continue to need your help now more than ever.

To make a secure online donation, please visit our donation page. Or, you can make an even bigger impact by becoming a monthly donor. As a regular monthly supporter, your generosity provides critical and consistent funding towards our daily efforts to help women and their children impacted by abuse, trauma and homelessness. Automatic monthly payments are easy to set up, convenient, and create a lasting impact on the lives of women and their children at Nellie’s.

We wish everyone in our community a continued abundance of health. Stay safe!

Jyoti Singh
Executive Director

Helping Nellie’s celebrate National Indigenous History Month

Posted on: June 11th, 2020 by Nellie's No Comments

Meet Joanna: a counsellor who gives so much to the women at Nellie’s

As a counsellor at Nellie’s, Joanna Shawana spends much of her time providing emotional support to the women living in our shelter. They’ve experienced traumas and every one of our counsellors help create positive spaces through one-on-one support, programs, and workshops that offer therapeutic healing and personal growth.

Joanna’s job is to listen, to provide guidance and support, and to help every woman with her personal healing journey. Sometimes when a woman shares their story with her, she feels compelled to share one of her poems from her book, Voice of an Eagle, that was published in 2006. When she recites them, it helps her express that she understands what they’re saying to her and that they’re not alone.

“I share a bit of me with them just to let them know that I have been there and I understand. Working as a counsellor needs a lot of compassion and understanding,” says Joanna.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Joanna also ran regular healing through art workshops. As an Aboriginal jewellery maker herself, she teaches the women living in our shelter to make jewellery, dream catchers, and more.

“Art brings you peace and it takes your other worries out of your mind,” says Joanna, whose native name is Niimkii-Giizhikgad-Kwe, which means Thunderday Woman. “When you’re focused on making a bracelet, you’re not focused on your problems. It gives your brain a break from the worries and provides a bit of stress relief. Also, it’s a way for me to teach the women that if they can sell the jewellery, they can make a little extra money when they’re on a tight budget.”

Helping Nellie’s celebrate National Indigenous History Month

Every June, Joanna also usually takes the lead to help Nellie’s celebrate National Indigenous History Month. She posts notices for events, celebrations, and traditional Powwows around the city, and takes over the Nellie’s kitchen for one evening to prepare a complete traditional Aboriginal meal for the women and their children living at Nellie’s. The first time she took on this project, her mother even visited the shelter to help out in the kitchen.

“I’ve made corn soup, and I’ve made tacos, and berry salads. It always a very traditional meal,” says Joanna.

Many years, she also helps celebrate Aboriginal culture by hosting a beading and drumming workshop for the women and their children. During it, she teaches about the importance of her drum, medicines, and how they’re used. Even though she says she’s quite shy, sometimes the group encourages her to sing a traditional song.

With physical and social distancing keeping us all apart like never before, National Indigenous History Month celebrations in our shelter are much more muted this year. But we still honour the history, heritage and diversity of Indigenous peoples in Canada and continue to recognize the strength of present-day Indigenous communities.

Thank you, Joanna for all you do for the women and their children living at Nellie’s. Once we’re able to resume regular programming, we’re looking forward to resuming Joanna’s healing through art workshops. If you would like to donate beads, stones, gems or other jewellery making supplies or tools, please contact us at community@nellies.org.

A huge thank you to one of our generous donors

Posted on: June 4th, 2020 by Nellie's No Comments

Vasie Papadopoulos

Here at Nellie’s, we are always forever grateful for the generosity of our donors near and far, in good times and in challenging times. And, as it is for many other essential programs and services around the city, these past few months since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, have been challenging for us.

It’s because of our generous donors that we have been able to continue to provide day-to-day necessities of life as well as much-needed programs and services that foster learning. And, we’ve been able to step up our cleaning and disinfection measures, offer additional support and services for therapeutic healing during this challenging and stressful time and then move all of the women and children into a nearby hotel when an outbreak spread through our shelter in late-April.

One such donor that we’d like to highlight is Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Inc. The company first supported Nellie’s with a $20,000 grant in 2018. They generously renewed their support in 2019 and again in early 2020.

“At Rothmans, Benson & Hedges, there’s a large focus for us to support women both corporately and in the community,” says Vasie Papadopoulos, Communications and Outreach Manager at Philip Morris International Inc. (Rothmans, Benson & Hedges’ parent company). “If we’re going to champion women internally, we wanted to look at some of the things we could do externally to champion women’s issues. That’s why we support Nellie’s. They help with employment, financial literacy, and more. And, then there’s the shelter itself. The more we support that, the more we align our company values at a very local level.”

Even though Rothmans, Benson & Hedges had already contributed to Nellie’s for 2020, when Toronto and much of Canada started shutting down in mid-March to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, Vasie quickly called us to ask what else we needed.

“This pandemic happened very abruptly. It was a big pivot for everyone,” says Vasie. “When things started happening, we looked at our communities and asked ourselves ‘how can we help.’ We knew the longer the pandemic went on, the greater the burden would be on their services and their funding.”

When we got that very generous call, we were in the process of hiring 2 relief cooks to prepare additional meals for the women and children in our shelter. To encourage everyone to stay inside as much as possible, we introduced additional daily prepared meals as well as regular snacks to our schedule. Previously, only dinner was prepared for residents, leaving each person to use the kitchen to prepare their remaining meals for the day with groceries provided by us. Hiring more cooks and purchasing food daily greatly affected our bottom line. Rothmans, Benson & Hedges immediately stepped up with an additional $25,000 donation to help cover these costs.

“They were facing a very large additional cost and we decided we could help Nellie’s maintain the shelter and pay for the cooks to keep families fed. It was so important to us to support Nellie’s at this very basic level of keeping their operations going,” says Vasie.

“We want to keep doing more and we want to keep showing the community that we support communities across Canada. This is our way at a local, grassroots level of demonstrating our commitment to the cities and regions we operate in.”

Thank you, Rothmans, Benson & Hedges and all of our donors, large and small. The women and children in our community count on us to be there for them when they need us and we thank every single person, community organization and corporation that is helping us to do so during this time.