DPM’s WoodGreen Donation

We hope everyone has been doing well and staying safe during this uncertain time!

We at DPM have been extremely fortunate to continue working as an essential service and our staff mobilized quickly working from home. We realize that we are one of the lucky businesses and wanted to pay it forward to those who might not be as well off.
We were introduced to WoodGreen and made a donation of PPE to their frontline workers, as you may have seen on our LinkedIn page. The picture included is of Mwarigha, WoodGreen’s VP of Housing & Homelessness receiving our donation. We wanted to take this one step further and highlight this organization as it makes such a large difference to many individuals.

What is WoodGreen?
WoodGreen Community Services has been a Difference Maker for more than 80 years. Focused on poverty reduction, WoodGreen helps remove barriers — empowering vulnerable members of the community to live healthier, more independent, and fulfilling lives.
As one of the largest social services agencies in Toronto they are an innovative solution provider for some of the city’s most pressing and complex issues. With 75 programs delivered across 36 locations, their breadth is wide. They have developed a seamless continuum of care that addresses the root causes of poverty and are achieving remarkable outcomes.

With the support of a philanthropic community, WoodGreen helps individuals get off the street; job-seekers find training and employment; and youth leaving the child welfare system transition into healthy futures. They help parents access childcare and after-school programs; struggling, single-mother-led families reset their lives; and newcomers successfully settle in to Canadian life. WoodGreen helps individuals and families with low incomes to access housing and improve their financial well-being; they support people with developmental disabilities, mental health and substance abuse issues; and provide a wide range of health and social services to enable seniors to remain in their own homes as they grow older. WoodGreen is a solution provider for some of our society’s most complex social issues.
WoodGreen enhances self-sufficiency, promotes well-being and reduces poverty through innovative solutions to critical social needs. They envision a Toronto where everyone has an opportunity to thrive!

Looking forward…
WoodGreen is engaged in a $20M poverty-reduction campaign, which has an additional goal of increasing their affordable housing stock from 805 units to 3,000 units in the next 10 years – through builds, partnerships with developers, and acquisitions. The affordable housing waitlist is over 100,000 families which translates to over 10 years waiting for an affordable place to live (pre-COVID19 numbers). As you can see, the need is great.

WoodGreen’s focus during COVID-19:
WoodGreen’s current focus is on the senior sector and how they can support the most vulnerable by keeping them safe at home and out of hospital. WoodGreen has over 200 PSWs active in the community, runs the Toronto Seniors Helpline which is currently running at 10xs normal capacity, they have a number of seniors active living and affordable housing locations, and they run Meals on Wheels for a large swath of the east side of the city. So far, WoodGreen has seen a significant uptick in food insecurity as well as mental health concerns.

Thus far emergency response funds have gone to things like critical programming that needs to continue in a virtual setting, PPE for their frontline healthcare workers, emergency food and toiletry supply packages for vulnerable seniors and families. These packages include shelf stable grocery items, toiletries, paper products and cleaning supplies. To date they have already distributed over 1,000 bags to very grateful clients and anticipate increasing that number in the weeks to come.

DPM is proud that we were fortunate enough to make a donation of the PPE supplies to support the frontline workers that help make up this organization, from healthcare workers to cleaners to emergency responders to food handlers. If you would like to learn more about this organization, please visit them at: www.woodgreen.org/covid-19-commitment/