{"id":21590,"date":"2018-09-13T12:04:56","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T16:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=21590"},"modified":"2018-09-13T12:04:56","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T16:04:56","slug":"welcoming-arms-continues-to-evolve-to-meet-needs-of-evolving-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/welcoming-arms-continues-to-evolve-to-meet-needs-of-evolving-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcoming Arms continues to evolve to meet needs of evolving community"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since its inception nearly 12 years ago by several local churches to address the needs of low income Aurora residents, Welcoming Arms has grown to become so much more \u2013 and it has grown with the community.
\nThey were founded with the idea that the best case scenario would be to put themselves out of business, addressing each need that came through their door, but Welcoming Arms is getting ready to place an order of high chairs to meet the sheer demand of local children taking advantage of their meal programs each week.
\nThere\u2019s still a lot of work to do if they want to put up their \u201cOut of Business\u201d sign, but they currently have wind in their sails thanks to a new Strategic Plan and an upcoming infusion of cash courtesy of the Magna Hoedown.
\nWelcoming Arms is once again one of 20 community organizations that will share in the proceeds of York Region\u2019s biggest annual party, which will take place at Magna\u2019s Aurora headquarters this week. Their share of the pot will go towards not only keeping the doors open but fostering their mission which evolves continuously with the community.
\n\u201cIt is a true honour and privilege to be selected as one of the recipients again this year,\u201d says Sarah El-Geries, Executive Director of Welcoming Arms. \u201cBeing part of the Hoedown is such an incredible experience. It is such a unique fundraiser that to get to have a platform for all the non-profit organizations in this community and working together to raise awareness and raise funds for the programs that we deliver.\u201d
\nTheir pitch to be part of this year\u2019s Hoedown was similar to previous years, highlighting their role in providing meals to low income members of the community, providing grocery gift cards and transit tickets to those in need, and helping families gain their independence by making choices.
\nBut there was a key difference this time around. As focus around the country turns more and more towards the issue of mental health, so too does the attention of Welcoming Arms.
\nPart of their share of this year\u2019s Hoedown funding will go towards providing their many volunteers with mental health training so they are best equipped to serve their \u201cvisitors.\u201d
\n\u201cThat is one of the needs we have identified in past years: a need to have better training,\u201d says Ms. El-Geries. \u201cThis was something that came out of our team lead meetings, which we have every month where we get to talk to them about what is happening with our visitors. More and more we would see that we need to be better equipped for this. We reached out to a clinical counsellor and her partner who were putting together a pilot project and they tailored their training session to our needs and even incorporated our chart that we use to keep track of our visitors. It was very personalized and it is something that our volunteers felt was very relevant and they were very excited. We are looking to provide it again in the fall.\u201d
\nThey are also looking to provide for an increasing demand for resources, as this too has grown with Aurora.
\nWith the meal programs Welcome Table and Martha\u2019s Table now under Welcoming Arms\u2019 umbrella, their once small but mighty band of volunteers is now close to 200 members, but there are close to 500 visitors to their programs every month.
\n\u201cWe have a lot of new people and many, many children are part of our dinner,\u201d says Beverley Wood, one of Welcoming Arms\u2019 founding members, of the needs at Welcome Table.
\nAdds Ms. El-Geries: \u201cAnd we\u2019re looking at getting some high chairs for the amount of children we\u2019re getting.\u201d
\nStrategic planning is certainly not a new concept for Welcoming Arms, but their 2018 three-year plan is their first strategic plan which looks at their new tri-fold landscape. It identifies fundraising and sustainability, programs and services, volunteers, and communications among their top priorities.
\nFor fundraising, their goal is to generate sufficient revenue from their participating churches and other sources through a well-established fundraising program to meet the needs of the Aurora community, while their goal for programs and services is to accommodate all those who need assistance within the mandate of their vision, which is a belief in \u201cthe inherent dignity of all people. Reflecting Christ\u2019s love, we seek to help those in need to experience a fuller participation in society by providing social, economic and spiritual support.\u201d
\n\u201cIt was really a wonderful experience,\u201d says Ms. El-Geries of developing a strategic plan addressing their three key programs. \u201cIt was really unifying as an organization to have representatives from different areas of the organization come together to discuss and we had great discussions, great ideas were raised [on] how we can improve our programs, what programs we can start. The part I think was very important and something Welcoming Arms really stands by is we want to be shaping our programs around the needs of the people instead of the other way around. We had two representatives from York Region come and do a presentation on statistics for Aurora and its surrounding areas to better understand the population trends and who we\u2019re serving in this community. It set the tone for who we\u2019re serving and we had the opportunity to talk about our programs and how we can improve them.\u201d
\nMany ideas are currently percolating through Welcoming Arms and Ms. El-Geries and Ms. Wood say more will be announced in the coming months, but how those programs can be improved could be up to you.
\nWelcoming Arms is always looking for volunteers, whether your expertise is in helping people file their tax returns through Welcoming Arms\u2019 financial advise programs or whether you\u2019re a cook looking to lend your skills for either of their two meal programs.
\nFor more information on Welcoming Arms, how to become involved, or to support them through your purchase of a Hoedown ticket, visit welcomingarms.ca.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since its inception nearly 12 years ago by several local churches to address the needs of low income Aurora residents, Welcoming Arms has grown to become so much more \u2013 and it has grown with the community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/2018-09-13-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5Ce","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 09:36:40","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}