{"id":32391,"date":"2022-12-22T11:37:10","date_gmt":"2022-12-22T16:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=32391"},"modified":"2022-12-22T11:37:13","modified_gmt":"2022-12-22T16:37:13","slug":"close-to-90-families-served-after-community-answered-neighbourhood-networks-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/close-to-90-families-served-after-community-answered-neighbourhood-networks-call\/","title":{"rendered":"Close to 90 families served after community answered Neighbourhood Network\u2019s call"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The holiday season is one of emotion for the Neighbourhood Network team as they band together to make it merry for local families in need, and this year the community answered the call and helped make the wishes of more than 85 families come true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But these weren\u2019t grandiose dreams. For many families referred by partner organizations this year to the Aurora-based non-profit which matches local volunteers with groups and individuals in need, their asks were as simple as soap, toilet paper and laundry detergent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is our most special program,\u201d says Neighbourhood Network\u2019s Tanya Dennis, who led this year\u2019s Holiday Gift Drive. \u201cIt\u2019s such a busy time and we\u2019re constantly taking in donations and waiting for social workers to pick them up, and it just really hits home, even with people donating. A grandmother came in with her grandson and she was just shocked to see and hear about the fact so many people don\u2019t have food that she was crying at our door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a program we\u2019ll always do our best to support people in the community, but it\u2019s also nice to look back on it and to see how many families and how many individuals [benefited].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neighbourhood Network expected the referrals of between 80 and 100 families this season. It\u2019s a similar number to what they encountered in 2021, but markedly different from 2020 and earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, just 45 families in need were referred to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe know that the need continues to increase and we knew we would have lots of people reaching out,\u201d says Dennis. \u201cAlthough Friday was our deadline, we had four more families we knew were submitting applications, which was very last minute, but we don\u2019t want to turn them down and we\u2019ll do our best to support them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The communities in which Neighbourhood Network operates did their best to support them as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re very grateful for the support of our community,\u201d says Dennis noting that sports teams in particular really stepped up to the plate in a variety of ways in 2022, including collecting donations through teambuilding exercises, shopping excursions, and wrapping initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sports teams are becoming \u201creally more engaged\u201d in showing the importance of giving back to the communities in which young athletes reside, \u201cbringing awareness to the fact that their friend in school could be in need.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019re families now where you just don\u2019t realize it is happening so close to home and unfortunately it is. It\u2019s giving back where they live, which I think a lot of them are shocked to see. They don\u2019t understand that their friend might not have a Christmas dinner or gifts under their trees.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the needs identified by participant families were baby needs such as diapers, formula, snow suits, jackets, and hats, as well as what Dennis describes as \u201chigh requests for basic necessities\u201d such as laundry detergent, food gift cards, and toiletries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe found a lot of people were happy to donate to the Holiday Helper bags we created,\u201d says Dennis. \u201cIt\u2019s simpler and they can just go out and buy household items, but we still found there were so many people in the community who want to buy gifts for kids. That was our number-one requests. Sports teams\u2026picked kids about their age so they could have fun and go shopping and pick things the child would like, which was great to see.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

The holiday season is one of emotion for the Neighbourhood Network team as they band together to make it merry for local families in need, and this year the community answered the call and helped make the wishes of more than 85 families come true. But these weren\u2019t grandiose dreams. For many families referred by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":32394,"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-32391","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\/2022\/12\/2022-12-22-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8qr","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-21 06:08:04","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\/32391","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=32391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}