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.

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.