Toronto City Mission opens new Scarborough partnership
TORONTO, ON—While the face of urban poverty has evolved over Toronto City Mission (TCM)'s more than 130 year history, their vision for the future is clear: escaping poverty begins by equipping children.
TCM was founded in 1879 with a focus on caring for the city's poor. This fall, they launched a new vision and strategy, under the vision statement,"families impacted through poverty will lead transformed lives."
Children and youth are a key focus for TCM, says executive director Andrew Schell. Through projects like mentoring, tutoring, leadership training and after school programs, the goal is to help young people develop their faith both in God and in themselves.
"We want to give them a feeling that they have a hope for their lives regardless of their circumstances," he says, "of knowing what their gifts are, of knowing that hope of who they are in God, and feeling good about themselves and their prospects for life."
TCM runs programs for families in five Toronto communities. Each site is run in partnership with a community partner, and tailors its programs specifically to the needs of the community.
"We don't have a cookie cutter type approach," Schell adds. "We work inside the community where it is needed."
In October, TCM launched an afterschool program at St. Stephen's Presbyterian in Kingston-Galloway. The high need community in Scarborough has become synonymous with gang violence in Toronto, and is walking distance from the sites of several recent city shootings.
About 90 per cent of the community's residents live in subsidized housing buildings—the highest concentration of subsidized housing in all of Ontario. St. Stephen's are already involved in several community programs including a weekly food bank (in partnership with The Daily Bread and Second Harvest) and a monthly clothing bank. Partnering with TCM allowed them to meet a need that might have otherwise been beyond the congregation's existing resources.
"The problem with a lot of people we serve is they spent so much of their early lives being told they have no value," Schell adds. "A lot of what we need to do is point out they have gifts, and those gifts can lead them into a lot of exiting things in the future, and those gifts come from a God who loves them, and wants them to do the best in their lives."
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