Serving up tidings of dignity and hope
TORONTO, ON—Preparing for the holidays can be a tad challenging when there are more than 6,000 people on your Christmas list.
Every December, Yonge Street Mission (YSM) runs the Christmas Toy and Food Market. With the help of donors and volunteers, the free market allow parents to browse through tables of new games, toys and stuffed animals, selecting the perfect gift to take home and wrap for their children. The food market includes not only traditional Christmas items like turkey, but also specialty ethnic foods.
"It's about offering people hope and dignity," says Jon Brandt,
YSM's mission development officer. "Those, for us, are faith values…and part of what I believe Christ called us to do. Through selecting a toy—thinking, 'wow my daughter would really love that'—or choosing food, it's above moving people one more step along a spiritual journey of wholeness."
More than 2,000 children received gifts from the toy market last year and about 3,700 families used the food market. For many, YSM's markets are nothing short of a miracle, and their only opportunity to have a holiday meal with friends and family, or gifts under their tree.
Christmas is a time of year when caring for those in need is on the mind of many Canadians, and the mainstream media tend to run more stories about the difference charities make. YSM is thankful for the good mainstream coverage initiatives like the toy and food market get.
Yet, Brandt says, something special that happens when a publication like ChristianWeek comes calling.
"It's a different conversation that we can have with faith-based media than we can have with secular media," he says. "There are certain conversations we can have, certain topics we can go into. As staff, our Christian faith is important to us, and so that's valuable to us."
YSM's mission is to "demonstrate God's love, peace and justice to people living with economic, social and spiritual poverty".
"It's easier to get people engaged in issues of economic poverty than it is to get them to understand the need for spiritual enrichment, for feeding people's souls.
"For me, most definitely, there is no question that for an organization like ourselves, we want to have an opportunity to connect with the faith community. We need the support of the faith community. There's no question that it's important to us. And ChristianWeek lets us do that."
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