Having been responsible for the servicing buildings for the Scarborough Centre for Healthy Communities (SCHC) for almost a decade, our Kleenway team sees and meets people there all the time. As the pandemic hit with continued lockdowns and restrictions, the difficulties created for many of our clients – and especially for the residents at SCHC – became more and more obvious as the pandemic wore on.

By the time the holiday season was upon us, hearing about the struggles with funding and lack of recognition for the organization and the residents made our hearts hurt and kindled our desire to help.

The Kleenway Community Support Team came together to determine we would do something bigger than our usual support and brought an idea to our management team. We are very grateful that they agreed with our vision and committed to a $10,000 budget for our giving project.

Frankly, it’s very easy for a company to pass along a cheque to a support organization. Because our connection with the people at SCHC is strong, we wanted to do something more personal and more involved than a simple cash donation. Our goal was to be respectful of the residents and let the SCHC family know that we “see” each and every one of them.

Seeking to find a way to help as many people as we could with the allotted budget, we sourced feedback from the food pantry, SCHC staff and a few residents on how best to move forward. It became apparent early on that care packages would be the best option.

With a very short two-week window, we called in favours, received additional support from a few vendors (including: Sophie Takas of Serano Bakery, Nick Nickopoulos of Nicks Catering, Chris Sirdiropoulos of Belicious Products, and Andria Gountaras of Doro Fine Gifts), and then went shopping… and packaged, and wrapped, and bundled…

The cold, overcast, Saturday in December saw our team of 30 volunteers (including 5 young people ranging from 8 to 15 years old), descend on two buildings to distribute care packages to 150 residential units.

What a day that was!

  • Grocery packages included some staples and also specialty or premium items like coffee, tea, olive oil (Greek, naturally!), organic honey and jam, and other treats.
  • Wrapped gifts included ceramic mugs with hot chocolate, decorative seasonal ornaments, cookies and a pastry box filled with Greek pastries (what else!? Lol).
  • Traditional holiday meals (individually packaged and ready to heat) rounded out the giving.

The residents we met were wonderful! The gratitude we were given was overwhelming for many of us and moved us all deeply.

“It’s the only gift I’ll receive this year,” said one grateful resident we spoke with. Another said they were happily surprised by the organic honey and the olive oil (“We never get this kind of stuff!”). Perhaps our favourite was when someone, surprised by our knock, commented on what they felt was the personal touch (“I don’t even feel like I’m on a list!”). Our Community Support Team Lead, Linda Gountaras recalls, “once I heard that, I smiled and thought to myself, goal achieved!”

All of team there that day agree that they were the recipients of the best gift and are so honoured to have been able to meet everyone.

We are very grateful for Christine Hewitt (SCHC Community Support Manager) for organizing the event with us, and to her small, volunteer staff team who went “above and beyond” to help us during the distribution day. We truly couldn’t have done it without Christine and her team.

As the beautiful thank you notes from tenants continue to come in to us even now (in February), and the young people in our group have asked, “when we can do this again?”, we are happy to report that our Kleenway Team is committed to helping SCHC in the future. Stay tuned!

Linda Gountaras

Community Support Team Lead