Thank you, Ottawa Dragon Boat

The last thing anyone might be thinking about at this time of year is boating, especially dragon boating. But for a lot of organizations, such as the Ottawa Dragon Boat Foundation, the work goes on all year long.

This week, we met with the good people at Ottawa Dragon Boat to receive a generous cheque of $25,000. For those of you not familiar with how the Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival works, every year the festival raises money to support several charities. We were fortunate to be one of the charities last year.

It was a great festival. Our volunteers helped prepare food over the three days. Thank you to everyone who made it another successful event.

Below is a fun photo with Ottawa Dragon Boat Foundation CEO and President John Brooman, myself, and Micah Garten, Development Officer with Shepherds of Good Hope Foundation.

Donation of purses

I want to tell you about a creative way a group of women donated to Shepherds of Good Hope recently.

Three of the women -- Monica Wright, her daughter Tracey Wright and Tanya O'Connor -- were part of a group that collected women's purses to give to the women who stay at our shelter or in one of our supportive living facilities. But they donated a lot more than just purses. Those purses were filled with donated items that women can use every day. Here's a CTV story on the project.

It's a very clever way of making a donation. We know the women in our care will love getting these purses that we plan to hand out later this month at Christmas. Thank you so much to the group for taking on this project. I'm sure it was fun.

It's a great example, though, of how fundraising can be fun. If you're doing a group fundraising project, set a goal. Hopefully you'll exceed that goal but goals can make a project manageable. For example, the women who collected the purses had the goal of filling the purses with certain items. A school will set a goal of making a certain number of sandwiches in one day. You might hold a canned food drive at your company and ask each person to bring in one can each day for a week. The goal is so easy for everyone to meet. Just one can per day for five days. And yet at the end of the week, everyone will be shocked at how much that adds up to. We'll even pick it up for you.

If you would like some ideas on what to donate, please visit our donation page or contact me at asilverman@shepherdsofgoodhope.com.

From left to right: Anna Silverman, Shepherds of Good Hope Foundation Executive Director, Monica Wright, Tracey Wright, Micah Garten, Development Officer, and Tanya O'Connor

Socks for the Homeless

Today we had visitors from Your City Sports and new company who sells incredible customized socks. As awesome as these socks are (check them out they look great!) even more amazing is their buy one give one commitment that for every pair purchased they will donate a pair of socks to a local homelessness charity. They recently began selling Ottawa Skyline socks at the Crazy Moose of Ottawa and Ottawa Souvenir and Gifts and so they came down to our Clothing Hamper program in order to donate roughly 40 pairs. It’s such a neat idea and we are so grateful to them for choosing to support our clients. As winter comes making sure that everyone has warm and dry feet is always such a challenge.



Marilyn Colwell & Micah Garten show off the socks in the clothing room

Hope Living 1st Anniversary Party

 


Today I attended the 1 year anniversary BBQ at Hope Living in Kanata. We were blessed with absolutely perfect weather for the occasion. It was so nice to see clients and their families mingling with staff members, community partners and longtime supporters. Everyone pitched in to help make the event a big success. The food was tasty and I kept hearing what a good time people were having. Some attendees were seeing the facility for the first time and got to hear directly from clients what an amazing impact the space has made in their lives.

If you are interested in learning more about Hope Living or wish to tour the facility please contact Micah Garten.

Dragon Boat 2014!

If you went by Mooney’s Bay last weekend you couldn’t help but notice North America’s largest dragon boat festival in full swing. With free concerts, great food and non-stop races the Dragon Boat festival was the place to be! What you may not have known was that Shepherds of Good Hope was right in the thick of things. As one of five charities chosen to receive financial support from the Dragon Boat Foundation, our staff, clients and volunteers got involved in a big way. The staff put together a team to race and while they didn’t end up as the fastest boat they may have had the most fun. Shepherds of Good Hope also arranged to provide volunteers to sell popcorn during the entire festival. The popcorn was delicious and it gave us a great chance to say hello to old friends and make new ones as we thanked everyone who attended for supporting our work.

 

Over all the weekend was a huge success and the Festival proved to be one of Ottawa’s can’t miss events. To see more photos from Dragon Boat check out our facebook page by clicking HERE.  

Temple Israel Ottawa

On June the 3rd Temple Israel Ottawa celebrated the Jewish festival of Shavuot, which is a harvest festival.

In biblical tradition farmers are supposed to leave the produce which has fallen from trees at the corners of their fields so that those less fortunate can have it. In keeping with this tradition Temple Israel takes up a collection in order to provide food for those less fortunate in Ottawa. For the 2nd year in a row they have chosen to make Shepherds of Good Hope the recipient. In addition to providing a massive amount of fruit and vegetables to our soup kitchen the whole congregation pitched in to help load the van, from the very young to the very old. One gentleman who was currently undergoing chemo was hauling around 50lb bags of cabbage, just happy to be able to help others! It was quiet the sight.

Our Development Officer, Micah Garten, with his father, Rabbi Garten

 Thank you to Temple Israel Ottawa for thinking of those we serve!