This is a time when Canada must harness its community-driven resilience. We’re asking you to share examples of how Canadian communities are responding to the crisis with creativity and imagination. Collective problem-solving and collaboration will be instrumental in how Canada mitigates the local impacts of COVID-19 and creates on-the-ground solutions.

Highlighted Initiatives

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Initiatives

Stone Soup Network is a Toronto-based, technology driven gift matching platform, enabling local businesses to provide gifts of much needed products and services to families and individuals in need

Food | Fundraising and volunteering | General: Online communities and networks | Local businesses

In support of the Stone Soup initiative is “Get your Soup on”

Chef Bashir Munye, named by Globe and Mail as one of Canada’s Next Star chefs is offering a virtual soup making lesson, on Wednesday September 22nd, from 6:30-8:30 pm [EDT]. The Toronto-based chef will teach people how to make Moroccan Harira, a zesty tomato based soup with chickpeas, lentils and fragrant spices.  Bashir believes that food is a vessel for understanding each other and coming together for social change, and is pleased to lend his support to the Stone Soup Network.

Toronto will be getting its longest dinner table yet this summer as part of a project from the person behind street food markets that have gotten us through restrictions that kept us dining outdoors this year.

Food | Local businesses | Placemaking | Shop Local | Street activation

Ontario-wide series of more than 100 outdoor dining events called The Longest Dinner Table that will launch in Toronto. Cuisines will vary by venue, but you can tentatively expect concepts like the longest kamayan dinner table from Tinuno, or a KBBQ table. Prix fixe tasting menus should range from about three to six courses. Ticket prices will also vary from venue to venue, about $30 to $120, with tickets available starting July 1. Participating restaurants will be officially announced in late June. Ultimately, Longest Dinner Table is giving the concepts to the BIAs and restaurants to execute, and will only take a small portion of ticket sales themselves. In Toronto, tables will be set up in streets blocked off by BIAs or in parks. The more bookings a restaurant gets, the more tables they’ll add, with no set upward limit.

Toronto Public Library staff have been calling seniors to let them know they are thinking about them.

Seniors | Social isolation

About 20 TPL staff began by calling 9,000 customers ages 80 and over, as well as all 1,000 Home Library Service customers. These calls provide a friendly check-in, and our staff can also share information about our services and offer assistance. Next on their list is to call customers ages 70 to 79, approximately 13,000 more people!

Toronto school principal organizes to get 1400 people in neighbourhood vaccinated in school

COVID testing/vaccination initiatives

Building on a vaccine clinic being set up in his school, the principal organized for teachers/staff, parents & community members to be vaccinated. He sent an e-mail blast, and a follow-up reminder, in the days leading up to the one-day clinic. Parent council members organized to drop flyers at the apartment buildings that flank the school. The principal also worked with Michael Garron Hospital to make sure his staff were vaccinated early.

Vaccinating Black Toronto: pop-up clinic of the Black Health Vaccine Initiative, a collaboration between the Black Physicians Association of Ontario (BPAO) and a number of local organizations servicing the GTA’s Black community

COVID testing/vaccination initiatives

The outsized impact of COVID-19, married with lower rates of vaccination in the Black community, mean that it has been much more difficult to manage the spread of the disease within a population that is already marginalized. Saturday’s event was an amalgamation of information session and vaccination clinic, and by the end of the weekend, the group had administered 2,231 doses. While planning for more pop-up clinics, the BPAO is continuing to run a standing vaccination clinic in partnership with Taibu Community Health Centre in Scarborough and other community allies. BPAO physicians have successfully vaccinated about 250 people per day at that location, coming up to a total of about 2,350 vaccinations before last weekend’s event at the JCA.

Sanctuary TO holding vaccination clinics for individuals unable to access formal clinics

COVID testing/vaccination initiatives | Frontline services | Housing and homelessness

The idea is that this is a low-barrier access clinic, prioritizing friends who are unable to access a more formal vaccine clinic. This clinic will be surveillance-free, with no pre-registration or documentation/health cards required. This clinic is prioritizing homeless, under-housed, undocumented and sex-workers communities.

plazaPOPS is a community-lead, high impact, and low cost, process to transform plaza parking lots into free and accessible gathering places.

Local businesses | Main Street | Parks and public space | Street activation

Responding to the lack of amenities along Toronto’s inner suburban arterials for pedestrians and TTC riders, plazaPOPS seeks to support and enhance the vibrant communities and businesses that already characterize Toronto’s inner suburbs, suggesting context-sensitive approaches to their densification. plazaPOPS is currently working with the City of Toronto on a SSHRC funded project to understand how to turn our successful pilot into a sustainable citywide program. Transforming privately-owned strip mall parking lots into community gathering spaces is a pragmatic way to enhance inner suburban main streets and encourage outdoor gathering that supports small businesses — an especially important element of “bringing back main street” in response to COVID-19.

Here’s how community groups are getting COVID-19 vaccinations to Indigenous people in Toronto

COVID testing/vaccination initiatives | Indigenous

Indigenous vaccine outreach in big cities like Toronto comes with a unique set of challenges.  Providing a level of “cultural safety” is critical for many Indigenous people because of a mistrust of health-care institutions, deeply rooted in atrocities such as experimentation on Indigenous children in residential schools to racist mistreatment in hospitals that continue to this day

Community Land Trusts in Toronto’s Parkdale and Kensington Market — ownership model to keep rent affordable

Housing and homelessness

Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust — part of a growing movement of community-based groups who are taking affordable housing acquisition and preservation into their own hands.

City of Toronto awards $5.5 million in COVID-19 Vaccine Engagement Teams Grants to local agencies for vaccine outreach in vulnerable communities

COVID testing/vaccination initiatives

A key part of the Vaccine Engagement Teams’ work is recruiting 280 resident ambassadors – local and trusted leaders in communities across the city, who have on-the-ground relationships and networks in the neighbourhoods where they work and live. These multi-lingual ambassadors will work with community agencies to reach out and make connections in their areas, and provide information about and connections to vaccination options. They will be trained by behavioural scientists on information about COVID-19 vaccines, common vaccine concerns and other COVID-19 risk reduction strategies, and will act as local contacts for residents.

In Toronto, Rexdale Community Health Centre, Black Creek Community Health Centre and the United Way are partnering for a resident ambassador program to help with vaccine rollout.

COVID testing/vaccination initiatives | Fundraising and volunteering

This pilot combines trusted community ambassadors with local, accessible testing and on-site vaccination to get the word out, improve vaccine confidence and get people vaccinated. In fact, the City of Toronto’s newly announced COVID-19 Vaccine Engagement Teams Grants will build on this model. They will also be coordinating the vaccination efforts by leveraging the strength of our co-led community coordination tables that convene regional and municipal partners, and local community agencies, to understand needs on the ground and deliver a coordinated response.

Volunteer Toronto initiatives help Torontonians Get Vaccinated and Support Isolated Seniors

COVID testing/vaccination initiatives | Seniors

Volunteer Toronto is committed to enabling COVID-19 vaccinations with the support of volunteers in a safe, ethical and efficient manner. The safety of volunteers, and the clients they assist, is our number one priority. This news item will be updated as more information becomes available.

Are you an organization interested in engaging volunteers for vaccination support? Email subscribe@volunteertoronto.ca

Are you interested in supporting vaccination related efforts as a volunteer? Do you have healthcare experience? Sign up for our mailing list and be the first to hear about opportunities as they arise:

The City of Toronto has partnered with service providers to offer transportation services for people who need support to get to vaccination appointments.

COVID testing/vaccination initiatives

Transportation options are available to people with disabilities, those 55 years old and older, and others who are frail or have underlying conditions which make them at greater risk from COVID-19 and/or render them unable to safely access other modes of transportation.

This program is intended for those who have no other options for transportation to vaccination appointments.

COMMUNITY -DRIVEN TESTING STRATEGIES FOR COVID -19 Informing an integrated approach for the hardest hit communities

COVID testing/vaccination initiatives | Public health

Health Commons has been working with partners in Toronto and Central Region communities hardest hit by COVID-19 to better understand the role of local response strategies as part of the recovery effort

Interviews with over 100 residents and community organizations offer insights about what’s driving the high rates of transmission in ‘hotspot’ communities and how healthcare partners can help This proposal outlines a proposed model for community-based COVID-19 response, including an integrated approach to testing that could be piloted in hotspot communities Core elements of the model were designed with the community.

The Local is keeping a weekly progress updates on vaccination efforts in the Greater Toronto-Area’s highest-risk neighbourhoods.

COVID testing/vaccination initiatives

If the intention is to vaccinate the highest risk neighbourhoods first, then there is a need for more real-time, dynamic prioritization. This requires some understanding of a neighbourhood’s propensity for COVID infections (based on cumulative cases per capita), as well the degree of protection it has from the virus (percent of residents vaccinated). Scatterplots are included. The best use of an incremental dose of available vaccine is in moving postal codes in the upper left to the right as quickly as possible. That will avoid the most infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. As new data are released by ICES each week, the blog will be updated to help track these moving targets.

Affordable housing secured by the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust Community-driven acquisition of at-risk property made possible with innovative financing solution

Housing and homelessness

The Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust (PNLT) and the Vancity Community Investment Bank (VCIB) today announced the acquisition of an at-risk low-rent residential building containing 36 apartments in Parkdale, Toronto in an effort to help protect the area’s affordable rental stock. With this acquisition the land trust has grown its community ownership in the area from 15 to 51 units of affordable rental housing – equivalent to a 240% increase.

The City of Toronto has approved the development of non-police crisis response teams

Indigenous | Mental health | Policy leadership

The City will introduce pilot projects that will pave the way for responding to the thousands of mental health-related crisis calls in Toronto. https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2021/04/25/toronto-approved-non-police-crisis-response-teams-this-woman-is-trying-to-build-them.html

City of Toronto partners with Vaccine Hunters Canada to help residents quickly find available vaccine appointments at City-run clinics

COVID testing/vaccination initiatives | Policy leadership

Pilot Project Evaluations: Strengthening Public Market Systems in Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Toronto

Food | Street activation

Project for Public Spaces provided leading market organizations in each city with pro bono technical assistance and a planning grant to audit each city’s existing market system, identify challenges and opportunities, and convene a broad group of stakeholders to advocate for new policy and governance structures.

How a Twitter bot is helping people in high-risk downtown Toronto get vaccinated

COVID testing/vaccination initiatives

Behind the bot is Dayi Lin, a 28-year-old computer scientist who also lives in the area. His bot quickly amassed a following of a few hundred people within days of its creation and with no advertisement on Lin’s part — a testament to how residents in downtown east and west, where rates of COVID-19 are high, continue to exhaust every option available in order to secure a vaccine in the absence of a centralized, provincial booking system.

BIKEPOC group working to make Toronto’s cycling community more welcoming to under-represented groups

Mobility and transportation

BIKEPOC partners with local community bike groups like Charlie’s FreeWheels and Bike Chain to build and repair donated bikes. They completed 20 bike matches last year, getting bikes in the hands of women, children and people of colour.

Evaluation of COVID-response Complete Street activation (Toronto’s Destination Danforth)

Main Street | Mobility and transportation | Policy leadership | Street activation

Destination Danforth is part of a suite of ActiveTO programs designed to support the City of Toronto’s restart and recovery response to COVID-19. These programs are part of a period of unprecedented rapid program implementation and therefore deserve careful evaluation.The evaluation of the Destination Danforth Complete Street installation was conducted by Park People and The Centre for Active Transportation (TCAT) in September/October 2020.

Artist turns 3D scans of buildings in Toronto’s Chinatown East into a multi-player board game

Arts and Culture | Main Street

Linda Zhang, professor at Ryerson’s School of Interior Design in the Faculty of Community & Design, created this board game to create dialogue about what’s worth preserving and what the city’s Chinatowns should look like in the future. It’s on display now, including a large-scale 3D printed installation of Chinatown East Gate, at Vancouver’s Griffin Art Project as part of an exhibit called Whose Chinatown?, a collection of projects by Chinese Canadian artists about Chinatowns throughout the continent.

The BlackBox is a selection of culinary delights featuring Black, Indigenous and People of Colour food producers and a beautiful mask from artisan makers in partnership with FoodShare, a poverty and food insecurity non-profit

Food | Fundraising and volunteering | Local businesses | Shop Local

Available for order and delivered in Toronto in February 2021

City program aims to increase digital equity and access to affordable high-speed internet in Toronto

Policy leadership | Public health | Social isolation

The City of Toronto is introducing ConnectTO – a City-driven collaborative program that aims to leverage the use of municipal resources and assets to help bridge the increasing digital divide by expanding access to affordable, high-speed internet to underserved Toronto residents.

Parkdale FitPlay supports Black fitness leaders to help locals take care of their mental and physical health while exploring parks

General: Online communities and networks | Mental health | Social isolation

The local business improvement area connected with Black people in the fitness industry (yoga instructor, baseball coach, track athlete and boxing coach). On the Parkdale FitPlay Instagram account, these instructors take turns demonstrating how to do exercises with proper form. Instagram link: https://www.instagram.com/parkdalefitplay/

How it works: Community members are encouraged to visit designated public park locations and participate in self-led physical exercise and play, inspired by the FitPlay letter key. Each letter of the alphabet, A to Z, is associated with a simple exercise most can perform some variation of safely. E.g. A = 10 high knees on the spot.
Participants self-select a word or phrase and perform the exercises associated with each letter. E.g. P A R K D A L E = 10 squats, 10 high knees on the spot, etc. Mix up your FitPlay by choosing a new word, a new park  or a new challenge each time and invite your Parkdale friends and neighbours to do the same.

The band, Neighbourhood Watch produces a pandemic music video by engaging with neighbours in a residential building

Arts and Culture

27 Toronto households — involving more than 60 people and two family dogs — took part in a new music video simply by standing in the windows of their homes and then doing a little dance.

Shop Old Town Toronto: A shop local campaign that splits prize money wins between individuals supporting local businesses & the local business

Local businesses | Main Street | Shop Local

The St. Lawrence BIA and OLD Town have launched a support local campaign. Save & upload receipts of $25 or more (excluding delivery and tip) from local businesses February 8 – April 5, 2021, for multiple chances to win — $500 is for the shopper and $500 for a local business.  In addition there is one grand prize of $2K to be split with local business. Prize money is donated by BMO bank

 

Delivery optimization solution pilot being offered to Toronto restaurants this winter

Food | General: Sector resources | Local businesses | Main Street | Policy leadership

Through the pilot, Deliverect’s solution will connect UberEats, Doordash, SkipTheDishes, and other delivery companies directly to restaurants’ POS system in order to automate the online order process. Deliverect’s platform aims to alleviate the requirement to have staff maintain multiple tablets for delivery orders, reducing mistakes and wait times for customers. At least 100 independently-owned restaurants are expected to receive free access to the platform for 90 days through the pilot. The program seeks to pilot solutions that target challenges facing main street small businesses.

City of Toronto’s Black Community COVID-19 Response Plan to provide enhanced support for Black Torontonians

General: Tools for engagement | Policy leadership | Public health

Developed as part of the TO Supports: Targeted Equity Action Plan and in response to data released in late 2020 that revealed the highest rates of COVID-19 cases in Toronto (26 per cent) and vaccine hesitancy experienced by Canadians (about 30 per cent) were among Black people of African and Caribbean descent.

To help reduce the number of COVID-19 cases and effectively address the issues around vaccine trust and confidence within Black communities, the City has partnered with community agencies to provide COVID-19 health and safety awareness in Black communities and work with experts to prepare for and support immunization.

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