{"id":26414,"date":"2020-04-23T17:37:22","date_gmt":"2020-04-23T21:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26414"},"modified":"2020-04-30T14:21:16","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T18:21:16","slug":"welcoming-arms-gets-meal-programs-back-up-and-running-with-help-from-local-restaurants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/welcoming-arms-gets-meal-programs-back-up-and-running-with-help-from-local-restaurants\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcoming Arms gets meal programs back up and running with help from local restaurants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Welcoming Arms, the local ecumenical organization that organizes\ntwo weekly meals to provide food and fellowship to residents in need, was\nforced to wind down their meal programs last month in response to health and\nsafety measures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, thanks to help from local restaurants and the Rotary\nClub of Aurora, volunteers are eagerly getting ready to welcome guests once\nagain this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome Table, one of two community meal programs run by\nWelcoming Arms alongside Martha\u2019s Table, is set to resume this Wednesday, April\n22, serving up meals prepared by Bijoy\u2019s Restaurant, located on Temperance\nStreet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will not be a sit-down meal due to the present crisis,\nbut the Trinity Anglican Church parking lot will be transformed into a two-lane\nserving area with one lane dedicated to drive-up clients and the other\nallocated to clients who are accessing services on foot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe first Wednesday after the pandemic had been called,\nwe couldn\u2019t have our regular Welcome Table, so we did a take out,\u201d says Welcome\nTable volunteer Barb Allan. \u201cWe did a takeout meal that was prepared in our\nkitchen at Trinity and we had 52 people come. I think in general, we weren\u2019t\nquite sure what we were doing with social distancing and all that kind of\nthing, but I would say some of our volunteers were a little bit apprehensive of\nwhat they were doing, so we did it that one Wednesday and then we stopped \u2013 and\nwe\u2019ve been regrouping, trying to figure out how to continue in a safe manner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the intervening weeks, Ms. Allan joined the Aurora\nCares Community Task Force, a group of leaders and volunteers from across\nAurora convened by the Town and Mayor Tom Mrakas to help highlight the needs of\nthe community\u2019s most vulnerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting these important meal programs back up and running\nwas a top priority identified by the group and they set about making it happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe started a sub-committee which was all about food,\u201d\nsays Ms. Allan. \u201cMyself and Erin Cerenzia from Neighbourhood Network, Allison\nStuart from the Aurora Food Pantry and [Welcoming Arms co-founder] Beverly Wood\nare on that committee and our goal was to try and have food available for\npeople on a regular basis throughout the week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, with their regular kitchens currently closed,\nworking out the logistics was another matter all together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have been fortunate that some of our local\nrestaurants and people have offered to help us with that,\u201d says Ms. Allen. \u201cFor\nthis first Wednesday night, Bijoys is preparing the takeout meal for 100 people\nin the kitchen at their restaurant. The Rotary Club has donated money that is\ngoing to pay for the meal, which is wonderful. We are fortunate that Bijoys is\ngoing to be making the meal and we have Catharina\u2019s Kitchen making our meal for\nWednesday, April 29, and we\u2019re still talking to a few other local restaurants\nwho are also stepping up to help us go forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have been upset that we haven\u2019t been able to provide\nthe meal for our clients over the last several weeks and our hope is we can get\nout to all those people and let them know that it is available. We are starting\nto call our regular patrons to let them know we are up and running again and we\njust want them to feel supported. This has probably been a very difficult time\nfor a lot of those people, so we\u2019re really happy we can get back and support\nthem again. We do suspect that we might be supporting people we haven\u2019t\nsupported before because a lot of people have lost their jobs and are in a\nfinancial pinch right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on how you and your business can become involved in delivering these community meal programs, contact Welcoming Arms at 905-726-1483 or visit welcomingarms.ca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcoming Arms, the local ecumenical organization that organizes two weekly meals to provide food and fellowship to residents in need, was forced to wind down their meal programs last month in response to health and safety measures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. But, thanks to help from local restaurants and the Rotary Club of Aurora, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6S2","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-13 11:52:55","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\/26414","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=26414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}