Thank you to everyone who attended our last meeting. What a great night we had.
We welcomed some new members and heard about some more amazing charities in our Region.
Thank you to Cheryl Keddy Scott from the Village of Hope who recapped where your donations from last meeting went.
Thank you to Bobbie Corcoran who presented Red Roof Retreat and Emily Oriold who presented Foster Festival.
Our winner is Red Roof Retreat.
Red Roof Retreat is an organization that provides quality recreational and respite services to children, youth and young adults with special needs. They currently support 212 families from within the Niagara Region. Red Roof has a support staff of between 25-30 people depending on the activities they are providing. They do not receive any government funding and are 100% supported through private donations and fundraising. And of course most fund raising events have had to be cancelled due to COVID.
They have two locations in Niagara on the Lake where they provide specialized summer camps and adult day programs. At the Ranch which is an 11 acre hobby farm complete with farm animals and they have an accessible trail and playground for those clients in walkers and wheelchairs. They provide weekend adult respite services at the one location and childrens weekend respite services at the other location to give special needs families a much needed break. Specialized programs and staffing are provided for the children and adults using the respite services and are usually booked out a year in advance. As well Red Roof Retreat uses the community centre inside the Ina Graften Village to provide summer camps, teen nights, family swim nights and many other programs utilizing the therapeutic pool, five pin bowling alley and multiple activity rooms.
COVID has caused Red Roof Retreat to temporarily close due to the vulnerability of their clients. Many of their young adults live in group homes and have been shut in since the pandemic started. Others have been living at home with no social interaction which can be a struggle for them under normal circumstances. In some cases their clients have been traumatized by COVID and will require special attention and focus to get them back into a socially interactive environment.
Now that vaccinations have started and there is light at the end of the tunnel Red Roof Retreat will hopefully be reopening this summer with day camps and will then reopen their respite services once they have a better understanding of the new social distancing requirements. Increased costs associated with the government mandated salary increase for Personal Support Workers as well as increased cleaning supplies, PPE and other COVID related requirements will put a financial strain on Red Roof Retreat. The donations Red Roof Retreat will receive from being our chosen charity will be of great help in getting this organization back to providing a wonderful and much needed service to this vulnerable part of our community.
Here is the link to send your donation to and please reference 100+ Women Niagara in the message area so we know it came from our group.
Our next ZOOM meeting is set for September 29, 2021 starting at 6:45 for registration.
I wish you all the very best over these summer months, and we will see you in September.