Piotr Miazga on Unsplash
In June, I was invited to speak at the Canadian Caribbean Association of Halton (CCAH) Zoom Town Hall to discuss the issues of social justice and COVID-19. During that Town Hall, the CCAH’s Beat the COVID-19 Blues program funding by the Emergency Community Support Fund through the Oakville Community Foundation was announced.
This program has had a significant impact on our community and kept the CCAH members busy all summer.
Since June, CCAH has provided professional entertainment view the CCAH YouTube page to lift the spirits of people self-isolating, while maintaining a sense of community in Halton.
They’ve also visited community housing complexes, long term care homes, shelters, police platoons and private residences delivering meals to seniors, frontline workers and the vulnerable.
Though CCAH started with a budget for 400 meals, in partnership with Chef Melani Bastians and Food For Life, they were able to serve 2,020 meals to Halton residents.
But that’s not all the CCAH has been up to.
The organization hosted three Zoom Youth Leadership workshops, each with more than 100 high school students in attendance. One of those workshops focused entirely on policing youth issues. Many Halton Regional Police officers and staff were guests and spoke on a range of topics from drugs and mental health, to HRPS officer candidate recruitment process.
In August CCAH hosted a Zoom webinar in partnership with the Oakville Hospital Foundation to educate members about Diabetes and announce the CCAH fundraising campaign to raise $25,000 for the Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital – money which will be directed to the Compassionate Care Program for dispensing Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGM) to diabetics lacking adequate insurance and financial resources to fund this state-of-the-art blood glucose management tool.
My thanks go out to Andrew Tyrrell, president of the CCAH and his entire team for their dedication to our community.
About the Canadian Caribbean Association of Halton
The Canadian Caribbean Association of Halton (CCAH) was established in 1977 as a non-profit organization that has since gained charitable status. The organization promotes awareness that unity in diversity, full and active participation, unbiased inclusion, and the capacity to value differences equally are essential to the social, cultural, and economic growth of Halton Region.
