WORKING GROUPS

Harvest The North: Growing food collectively, sharing resources (seeds, seedlings, and tools), creating our compost, dreaming of greater sustainability, and strengthening our friendships and connections.

 Wood Share: Led by community members committed to sharing wood so nobody is cold in the winter. This program is made possible by many businesses and individuals thinking creatively about sharing and connecting, and is indeed a network of outreach, support and care. 

 Food Share: Has naturally grown out of the incredible community support and offerings of food. People drop off dried, fresh and frozen food to share with people who do not have enough. 

 ROCK(Rural Outreach Community Kindness) grew out of our harm reduction responses. A team of Community Support Workers meet people on the streets of Bancroft to offer basic needs, harm reduction kits, and referrals + lots of kindness!

 Housing and Home Share: We continue to work with the community on responses to the housing crisis. One initiative is 

Home Share, which is grounded in the belief that we all need a home and community connections. This model is flexible and based on needs and resources in our community. Our goal is to match homeowners with people seeking homes, in a supportive matching process. 

 Advocacy:  Examples of our successful community led advocacy include: work in 2016 to reduce rural hydro rates and our local campaign to reduce the Bancroft water rates. Both initiatives involved hundreds of people coming together to alleviate suffering due to broken systems.

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2020: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

This past year has shown us how close some of us are living to the edge of survival. We have seen so much trauma, deprivation and fear. At times this has been hard on those of us working close up, and bearing witness to decades of inadequate supports for so many in our community. 

Poverty and deprivation are systemic issues stemming from a very long historical focus on profit before people. Many of us have not benefited from this arrangement. And many others have been extremely hurt - people who have lost their housing due to job losses, health issues, family losses, seasonal and unpredictable employment, and inadequate government support systems. 

 Many people in our community cannot afford to eat healthy or regularly, and choose daily between food and housing (rent, hydro, water, mortgage, insurance…..). 

For many of us these stresses and losses result in mental health concerns.

In addition to mental health concerns, some of us suffer from addictions. These burdens are made worse by stigma.